In the summer, our family 'bus broke down, hundreds of miles from home. Got recovered to a nearby garage who inspected it and said it needed a new top end and timing belts - ouch!

Work came to around £1700. The mechanic who did it still thought the car was down on power after the rebuild, and I mentioned on the phone that I'd heard getting the timing right was critical here - he apparently hadn't much experience of this. Collected it, and apart from a strange 'thump' and sound on startup, it drove well, if a little down on power - then again it had done over 200k miles.

The very next day it wouldn't start - lots of black smoke from the exhaust. Rang up the garage who said it was maybe a glow plug issue, or relay. Booked it into a local garage who took over a month to finally get it running ok. When I collected it the local garage said the timing was completely out and it had blown the ecu and cooked the glow plugs. The bill for their work came to £1200.

Do you think I stand a chance of getting compensation from the rebuild garage by going back to them and stating they got the timing wrong which caused the starting issue? I believe my local garage is willing to state their findings to the other garage.

I just feel I shouldn't have had to fork out another £1200 immediately after having the top-end rebuild, when it appears a timing issue may well be the contributory factor. The starting was never an issue before the rebuild.

Any advice appreciated!

Edited by Rumfitt on 20/11/2012 at 06:48