I went to mazda today for an appointment to get my seat belts fixed. They made it sound like it was no problem and told me to come back in two hours to pick up the car. I get a call about 1 hour and 45 min later from them saying that they need $110.00 for an inspection fee and proceded to tell me they wern't under warranty. Can anybody clarify this or are they just jacking me around like I've herd thay try to do...?

 

http://www.autorecalls.us/aut-02/rec...x-7/index.html
ask them to look up RECALL CAMPAIGN #68702
I hope this link works: http://www.autorecalls.us/aut-02/rec...x-7/index.html
and I found another one:http://fc3spro.com/TECH/PROBLEMS/INT/sbelt.htm
Good luck and I hope that helps.STYX.

 

A lot of dealers have to be led by the hand on this one. They are clueless about it, because they never see it...

 

I'm confident some dealers will KNOWINGLY jack you around, too, because dealers HATE doing work for free. It's an understandable complaint, but unacceptable to not comply.

 

no, actually its the ONLY thing that is a lifetime warranty, so most of the time it says its been done, and with EVERYTHING ELSE, once its been done, you can't do it again, and get reimbursed for it. so this seatbelt thing is the ONLY exception in mazda's warranty rules.

its not free, mazda pays the dealership to do the work.

 

+1


having worked in the auto dealer industry for a dozen years i can tell you that recalls can be some of the most cost beneficial repairs.

why? because most work coming in the door is not repetative where recalls you can refine your work process, constantly learning ways to cut time off your job and to make your life easier.

for example in the late 90's dodge had a recall for the rollover valve on top of the fuel tank of their full size trucks, the job paid us .7 labor hours to drop the fuel tank and replace the valve and reinstall the tank. except for us skinny guys we could wedge ourselves between the fender of the truck and squeeze up to the top of the tank and pop it out and pop the new one in in less than 10 minutes.

now with that example you might think the dealer was making the buck BUT most auto shops are "flat rate" now, meaning if you take 10 minutes to do that 3/4 hour job you got paid 3/4 of an hour for it, if you took 1.5 hours to do the job then you got paid 3/4 of an hour to do it.

now not all work is this way though, warranty times usually are the most difficult to beat because they gather the book time off a person in a closed environment doing the job 10 times and they average all 10 jobs out to come up with the figure they use. this person has all the tools ready in front of him and does not take a break for the duration of the timing process.

some dealers use stringent methods to get those time figures, for example when i worked at cadillac they had kia also... kia paid us 2.3 hours to swap an automatic transmission. i only beat this time once in the 1.5 years i worked there, with plenty of cursing along the way.

 

Recalls are pretty easy to follow. Honestly I haven't seen a single rx7 at the shop for warrenty work. Some of these 'recalls' are really ssp's ( Special service program) Which have a cut-of date to which the customer can receive the repair at the cost of Mazda. Or are extended coverages which also have an expiration period.

Mazda is pretty good at sending out notices to new owners about recalls and the like. When the vehicle is brought to our shop ( I work as a Mazda tech btw) I run a warranty inquiry just to make sure there aren't any warranty campaigns that haven't been completed. Most of the warranty work I do I make pretty good bank on. Remember the 4206f recalls on the Rx8's? lol, I can do one of those engines in less than 8 hours and I make roughly 13. SO bring them in by allll means. lol.

 

+1. mazda is like that too. 2.3 hours to do a trans is FAST...

 

transmissions and tune ups are the most common repairs on all vehicles, which is why those 2are the jobs most techs want to aim for.

but some of the tranny guys were horrible, lying about replacing parts and skimming to just the problem area in the trannies yet claiming to rebuild the whole thing. i have seen plenty of fraud in my life for me to never want to work at a dealer again.

 

I'm not sure about the way they "time" a technician performing a warranty/recall job. The manufacturer almost always pays maybe half of what the real book time is in labor hours. In the end it can be the dealership and technician that get screwed. They are bearing the cost if the average car typically takes longer than what the manufacturer will pay. The technician ends up spending say 5 hours on a job that has a warranty book time of 3 and a non-warranty book time of 5. So in many cases they lose money because they could have spent that time actually getting paid for their work.

For a recall/warranty it is certainly possible to do the job in the allotted budget of hours or even beat it and make good money. It just depends on the job. One of my buddies who works at a Ford dealership gets screwed all the time on warranty work especially when it is oddball ****. Recalls for large numbers of newish cars are different than an oddball seatbelt replacement for a 20 year old sports car with brittle interior.

 

true, but keep in mind the recalls pay slightly more generously because the corporation looks bad if the recalls are continuously being done with shady practices in attempts to actually break even by those performing them. recalls are done with safety in mind, so a few tenths are tacked on usually.

 

Not true. Most of the jobs that I do for warranty time I break even on in most cases.

It's true the more you do a job, the more ways you find to take short cuts to get the job done quickly while still performing the recall as specified by the manufacturer.

I pride myself on my workmanship, and yes sometimes I do bite the bullet on certain jobs. The things that kill me for warranty work is diagnostic jobs that are warranty. It's hard to claim the time you actaully put into finding the issue with a vehicle.

As for 'shady practices' it all depends on the tech doing the work. If you have a guy that doesn't give a damn about anything but trying to make a buck, then yeah, chances are he's gonna screw it up. My take on it is. I'm here to fix customer cars, the by product of doing my job well is making money. Simply put.

 

when I was a younger fellow I would go into my local service center like I knew everything, and usually I would have a battle.
I find its easier to let the service writer lead the way and if necessary inject a TSB or whatever to back up something up. Over the years this has been 4 of them for brakes and 2 for transmissions.

Now im not saying you went into the dealership like a know-it-all, but you get more bees with honey then vinegar know what im saying?

 

wait until you have 45 hours into rebuilding an engine that only pays 25 labor hours and you have to beg the service manager to give you a few hours so you can eat. first time warranty jobs suck, only a few you can make time on, it also really depends on the company you work for. jaguar and mercedes for example pay better and give more warranty hours than most others.

i generally took the jobs that no one else would do, which is also another main reason why i no longer work at dealers. i would have made a good foreman but not a good flat rate technician, except i look young, much younger than i am and i always had to battle over that fact and prove myself to even get a fair hourly wage when applying for jobs. when in my mid 20's i already had 10 years of experience and was still difficult to get journeyman wages.

in all honesty, you learn next to nothing about actually working on a car there anyways, you learn how to switch nuts and bolts and do basic diagnostics but i only really learned how an engine truly operates when i started doing tuning and rotary engine work learning the affects of heat and boost, detonation, octane ratings, clearancing, etc etc etc. reminded me of the local guy who took his 8 to the dealer last week to swap the motor and the techs were all standing around it asking how he liked his turbo, the car had a pettit supercharger on it... none of the techs corrected him making us think that none of them knew. who knows, if i worked at the dealer without any hobby time i might have still been that way also.

 

So I talked with Mazda today and they told me the seat belts were under recall and not a warranty for the life of the vehicle on the road (like I have read many places). They told me they were good for a 1 time free repair and that the previous owner got them fixed in 1999. I guess that means I have to find another way around this. Any suggestions on a cheap way to get them repaired or do I have to pay $110.00 just to have them inspect them and tell me it's gonna be way more to fix them? Cause if that's the case I guess I'll never have working seat belts... and I know that's a drag strip requirement

 

You just need to talk to someone else, and use the letter in the thread to explain: https://www.rx7club.com/2nd-generation-non-technical-pictures-198/recall-seat-belts-810420/

 

I didn't realize that. Makes sense though, since the directive comes from the main branch that they'd pay for it, too.


yes, very fast, unless it's like a Festiva lol

 

Did you talk to Mazda Customer Service at the 1-800 number? If necessary, get the NHTSA involved. The warranty is for the life of the vehicle, regardless what number owner you are, regardless of how many times the rails have been replaced before. Perhaps if they didn't make faulty rails, they wouldn't still have to deal with warranty claims on 20 year old vehicles. It's not entirely their fault, as the whole automated shoulder belt was a horrible idea anyway and rightly went away.

As a side note, if you just don't feel like dealing with it, you could always get the belts retracted, and just unbuckle the shoulder harness and have to buckle up twice every time. It's a pain in the ***, but one I just went ahead and did before I started restoring my TII. Once the car is back on the road, I'm debating if I even want to have them replaced or not. I suppose I could just not install my A pillar, B pillar and quarter trim and take it to have it done, as I spent lots of time and money finding good trim pieces for the restoration and I'd like to not have them destroyed.