Expectations of Garages; Am I being Unreasonable?

[bobins]

As an aside to the above comments regarding installing/building your own major items at home - whilst there is no legal definition of what a 'Competent Person' is, the broadly accepted definition is "someone who has the Skills, Knowledge, Aptitude, Training, and Experience" to do the job. The actual definition of a 'Competent Person' is up to the courts to decide (© Homer Simpson)

[OwenP]

Small update: I took the car back to the garage today after work as they're back from their holiday.

Asked if they'd forgotten anything (politely) as the car had developed a rattle the day after picking it up, they didn't think they had. One of the mechanics came and had a look, couldn't see anything immediately apparent as loose, so took him for a short drive into a local industrial estate. He had another look and identified the issue as being the heatshield over the cat rattling between the cat and bodywork. Although my personal suspicion is that this was probably dislodged whilst they were removing the belly plate, I've no way to prove it. I've left the car there overnight and they're going to have a look at sorting it tomorrow.

[doctle]

I cannot see how the heat shield could be moved by removing the under-tray. Things work loose on cars coincidences happen all the time. Years ago I left my A4 in for a service it came back with a very annoying metallic rattle. Someone had left a Snap on 13 mm spanner on the front panel, I still have it.

[GiveMeABreak]

Mine also worked loose and caused vibration, stumped the techs too until it went on the ramp and was found to be loose.

[OwenP]

I cannot see how the heat shield could be moved by removing the under-tray. Things work loose on cars coincidences happen all the time. Years ago I left my A4 in for a service it came back with a very annoying metallic rattle. Someone had left a Snap on 13 mm spanner on the front panel, I still have it.

The reason I suspected that was due to the belly plate going all the way back to the heat shield, so it wouldn't take much of a backwards movement to hit the one with t'other.

However a slightly less useful update today: The garage have had a look and decided the heatshield is actually in place properly once they got it up on a ramp, what is not happy is the gearbox! They had it running up on a stand and can hear (with a stethoscope) one of the bearings in the gearbox collapsing. So they suggested I ring the local Seat dealer as the car is just over 5 years old and has only covered just under 27k miles and see what the dealer can do for me. So next step is to ring the dealer in the morning (all the technical guys had gone home when I rang this afternoon.) and see what they say, although I'm not hopeful as the sales guy says their goodwill normally stops at 5 years. Failing that he suggested ringing Seat customer services and laying it on thick with them. And with that I think I do have to put this one down to co-incidence!