Possibly the worst night ever....

[Mufasas Mommy]

Ok...so a few of you probably don't know that along with animals, I am into cars. My fiance, Matt, has a 01 Grand AM all fixed up, I'm a co-founder of a car club, all that stuff. Well, my Bro-in-law, Jeff, has a 97 Trans Am all fixed up, like 15,000 in just motor work. It's his pride and joy. He just had the headers replaced in the motor about 6 months ago. Well, about 2 months ago, he took it up to put it on a Dyno to get it tuned. Needless to say, the motor blew up on the dyno, the car doesn't even start.

Here comes the bad news..

So Jeff went up past the shop to see how the progress was going on his car. He pulls up, no one is at the shop. They have been working nights b/c of the heat. He looks, from the front of the car, sees his shift light is missing from off of his dash. Well, he also sees that there is a black trash bag covering the drivers side window. He immediately goes up to the car, and looks inside. He sees that the shift light, which was bolted down, has been ripped off of his dash and the wires have been clipped. His helper, who was with him, says "Hey, watch this" and just opens the passenger side door. Jeff immediately calls his wife, and tells her, since she has time to do it, that she needs to get ahold of the guy who runs the shop and find out what happened to his car.

Final part, Jeff's car got stripped. And there's nothing he can do about it.

[Novel]

I'm not sure if I understand... someone stole parts off his car while it was parked at a garage?? Did he call the cops? I'm assuming the parts will go directly to the market, and probably aren't all that common. Does he have serial numbers??

Sorry to hear about this happening, and to such a nice car... Hope they catch the guys!

[Mufasas Mommy]

The car was parked outside, his shop isn't that big, he can only put 7 in at at time, and 5 when he has to use the dyno. Jeff's car was parked right out back, across from the ramp that goes into the shop. He talked to the police, and they said unless they had video or proof, there wasn't much he could do about it. Jeff didn't have his parts serial #'d. They are all customized parts. Novel, your right, they will probably be sold on the local "black market" and lord knows there's no way to track that stuff. I am hoping that I can keep an eye out and see if anything looks like his stuff, as it's all special stuff that isn't something the local kids would have around here.

[Novel]

Well, that is just too bad.
Keep your eyes open, and you'll find some kid with it. Plus, now that the police know, if they stop a car that has the parts in it, they'll know they don't beling there. If he could supply pictures of what they should be looking for, that would help.
Of course, I'm thinking a smaller city, if you have a large city with a large police force, you're kind of out of luck.
This is sneaky but, it works, if you have a local message board, post ads looking to buy the parts that were stolen, or run an ad in the paper, but don't make it too obvious... you just never know who will respond.

[rmci]

What about insurance? The shop's or his?
I agree that he won't see the parts again but insurance should cover a portion of the items taken.

[Mufasas Mommy]

Well, the insurance thing...Jeff just took full coverage off of the car, as it was getting work done to it, so he took it down to Liability only, b/c he's not driving the car on the road, it's being towed. Trust me, I asked him the same question. My mom used to work for the State Insurance company, so I know alot about Insurance stuff. I still don't know what Jeff's gonna do. I have put the word out locally, but we aren't even from the area where the car was. I used to live up that way (an hour from where we live now) so I put a few of my friends and their friends on the look out.

[Raised By Wolves]

Ugh, so sorry to hear about this!

It brought back memories of when my cherried out '66 Cuda was stolen, stripped, and burned. I couldn't even go to junkyard and identify the "body", I was so upset.

I'm glad they didn't get the whole car in your case. But, it still really sucks. Some people are real "special", aren't they?

I hope they catch they guys who did it.

[GSD]

was it your brother's shop or someone else's?? If its being worked on at the shop, they have the responsibility of keeping your car safe, at least take reasonable precautions like having it behind locked doors. If they don't, they could be held liable, no matter what they try and tell you. If this car truly had over 15 grand in motor work, i'm sure the rest of the car is worth a lot, i would be contacting an attorney.

If it was a friend and he had just left it by his shop to work on when he could and had a pretty informal agreement, he very well could be SOL.

[Mufasas Mommy]

No, it was a mechanic that he had heard about. The car is a 2 door, both the doors were open. They were responsible for the car, and they didn't take care of it the way it should have been. I'm so disgusted, we are going to contact the people we found him through and complain, then file a complaint with the better Business Burau(sp). The guy we were talking to seemed really fishy and fidgety. I think either he had something to do with it, or he didn't want to tell Jeff and it happened a while ago and he's just covering his tracks. Jeff found the car like that on his own, the guy at the shop said he didn't notice it. How can you not? Even if you had only noticed the broken dash board and cut wires, something should have set off warning bells!! Agree??

[calgal]

Something sounds awfully fishy here!!!! I have a deep feeling that whoever was working on that car has all the parts, and then just put it outside so the blame can go elsewhere. I hope he had some good insurance, but I'd take it to court.

[fireworksinjuly]

Thats horrible.
My husband has a 91 Mustang, that he too spent well over 12K on. It ended its life just after its first 9second quarter mile. Something in the moror just couldnt hold the power, so it came lose, sent the pistons out the side of the block, the headers were cracked etc.
It was the fastes street legal car in the area till it blew up.
He was so upset so he sold it, it got traded around the city a bit, then a few months ago I sold MY Mustang so that we could buy it back and re-build it....again.

I guess your story is one of the many that cause us to keep the car at our house, and we do all the work on it ourselves.

I allowed my husband to sell his baby once, Im not doing it again. It may take us years to get it back running, especially with a baby on the way. But once its done it will mean the world to my husband.

[PitBullGrrl]

That sure is horrible!