The sad part for me is that after almost 2 years, I was ready to try and trust someone again. I took my Audi to the only dealer in the area because it was having a misfire issue. They have looked at it 3 times, told me twice they found and fixed the problem but it's still there. They over charged me for parts and labor and replaced parts that had nothing to do with the problem. The red flag for me should have been when they called me to ask what kind of spark plugs I had put in it. Really? Are you kidding? It takes 2 min to remove the plugs, any decent mechanic would pull the plugs first thing with a misfire issue. This is an Audi dealer that sells a $150,000 car and they can't pull a spark plug?

 

Now you know why we call them "Stealerships". It's the whole idea of "keeping the customer coming back...so you can bilk more money from them". And yes, you are correct are the first item to check when diagnosing misfiring is the plugs. Just out of curiosity, did you pay with a credit or debit card? Sounds like a prime reason to reverse the charges.

As my dad was an engineer for GM in the late 1960s, then moved to Detroit Diesel Allison, his skills in diagnosing issues was top-notch. One very clear bit of wisdom he passed onto me is that if a device is too complex for you to understand and diagnose yourself, start reading. If it's still too complicated to understand, you need to have a simpler device. Since I can't figure out how automatic transmissions work (my dad rebuilt them for years), I'm a big believer in the virtues of a manual transmission.

One trick I use to gauge a dealership's expertise is to give them a part number. When hunting around for parts for my 20B, I used NF02-13-257A (primary injector seal) and only told each one it was for a 1990 Cosmo if they couldn't immediately tell me what it was. Out of the several I called, only 2 knew that it was for a 20B Cosmo by the NF0x prefix. One of those was Ray Crowe at Malloy Mazda and the other was Continental Mazda in Anchorage, Alaska.

 

learn your cars from the inside out so you can fix them yourself