Trust Issues (With Kadel's Auto Body)
 

I recently was involved in an incident where my roomate backed into my car (pretty hard) and dented the rear quarter panel. I got his insurance to pay for it and took it to Kadel's Auto Body on Woodstock. The car looks fine now.

HOWEVER

My avg mpg meter (on the dash) was at 15.5mpg when I brought it in, and read 10.0mpg when I got it back.

There was only a difference of 5 miles on the odometer (430 - 435).

Does it suggest my car was taken for a joyride? How much should I trust such a number (does anyone even know how the average is measured?) And how could the avg change so drastically over 5 miles (and 9 days of service)

Well they could have disconnected your battery for an extended period of time. It would have caused your AVG MPG gauge to have a lower number as well, setting it back to zero until driven.

That would be a pretty good guess, if that's what you'd want to believe. We are humans after all, so it's in our nature to think of the worst case scenario. Hooning around for 5 miles might have gotten your average MPG down from the already poor 15.5 (which suggests you have a heavy foot...) to even less, implying that whomever was behind the wheel had an even heavier foot than yours. :)

But consider this - could the battery been disconnected for an extended period during the repairs? If so, the ECU resets and re-learns and it's very likely that with 5 miles of relatively slow driving, the fuel trims might be off enough to impact your fuel economy.

Finally, playing double / reverse devil's advocate, why would the facility need to move a car around for 5 miles?! Even at mine, most cars don't get 5 miles on my dyno when I tune!


Food for thought!


Bob @ Drift-Office, LLC

Bob you make a valid point. 5 miles does seem a little much to move the care. But even on the race Track where my foot is glued to the floor, I didn't get that Dramatic of a Drop in AMPGs. So its anyone's ball game. only way to know would be to ask and see what they say. But that is in the case they are honest too. I have read some Horror stories about cars in mechanic shops.;-)

I drive mainly city roads with lots of traffic, never really go more than 40mph (and by actually measuring gas fillups vs odometer i get 22mpg)

And I asked them to check alignment, so maybe that could explain the 5 miles? I was curious what the mileage of a Dyno test would be, so thanks for that.

I will call them and ask if they disconnect the battery during servicing. Thank you

I get 10mpg at the track and that's by spending an entire tank at the track at redline. To think some1 did that in the street with out crashing or getting ticketed...shit, he would deserve a medal lol.

Cuz race car.

Honestly it sounds fairly normal to me. They probably drove it 5 miles between moving it around their lot/shop 10 times and a short test drive to make sure everything functioned as normal.

If it moved 5 miles and it sat idling for a total of 20 minutes on their lot then the MPG would be quite low.

MPG goes down quickly if you idle it for a long length of time.

Cold out, left the car on to warm up or listen to music? How was the gas gauge?

What I do not trust from Kadel's is their quality of work.

I recently got rear ended. Avoided Kadel's because my co-worker used to work there, and she advised against it. She said the shop guys are lazy and quality of work is sub-par. Overall, they will find shortcuts to achieve the "same" result (ie. paint matching). Obviously, this will vary among locations, but it also shows the extent of manager oversight...

I ended up going to Artistic Auto Body in Tigard. 100% satisfied. Stress-free experience.
Sorry somewhat :offtopic:
I don't think they took your car for a joy ride...

Took it on a ramp run ;)

I've taken my car to Kadel's Auto Body 4 times in the past and they've messed something up each time. At the woodstock one you mentioned they accidentally had paint on my windshield sort of like they didn't cover it and had overspray hit it. I had to take it back in for them to get all the little red paint droplets off.

I only take my car to Europa Auto Body now.

I had tualatin auto body do all the work on my BRZ with the widebody and they did a beautiful job. Nothing but good words for Tualatin Auto Body.