Quote:
Originally Posted by Tannaton
^^^ That.
Legally, the insurers only involvement is to cover the garage's liability. You do not have to accept anything that the insurers say - value of vehicle, view of liability etc. the garage has already technically admitted liability and you are quite entitled to recover all of your costs thus incurred.
As the car is 10 years old the £10k+ cost of a new engine will undoubtedly make it an uneconomic repair, but that shouldn't mean that the car will be recorded as salvage as it hasn't been in a collision and the payout is against the commercial liability of the garage for failing to provide services to the required standard.
Joining this thread late but a D5 engine allowed to tickover without oil for a short period will be fine - the stresses on the engine internals are de minimis at tickover compared to moderate to full throttle. When changing my oil I run my engine at tickover for 5 seconds after draining the sump to get the last 250ml of old oil out of the system. Provided the engine has recently been run and everything is covered, it's not a problem. I realise some folk will find this abhorrent but if you're going to disagree please back that up with some science or real life experience.
If driven though, the stresses increase dramatically but on an oil starved engine that's been driven the first component to go is more often the turbo - high RPM's + heat + no oil leads to their demise quite quickly. Next is usually the big ends & main bearings - at that point the engine it toast unless it gets a strip and rebuild as the oil ways will be full of swarf. Simply replacing the shells is bodgery.
|
I do this too, esp on diesels as the oil is always jet black with soot and being able to get as much of it out as possible is always a good thing. On anything that's gone over its service interval I run out with a minimal amount of cheap oil to dilute, run it for ten mins (enough oil to prevent starvation) and then drain that out too.
You basically were the unlucky one, would guess this happens one or two times a year at a larger service centre. Their initial treatment sounds bad, but later sort of picked themselves up. I run a workshop myself, and of any mistake was mad Id always attempt to rectify it, but if you get into big numbers, you have to pull the insurance chain, and then the liability falls to them, it's literally the point in having a policy, to protect you from customers and customers from you.
Sucks to now be in the insurance waiting game, can take 6 to 18 months, so if you have the means would just move on, and wait for their cheque to land. Stick to your guns on value, use a solicitor etc, but don't worry yourself about it any more than that, it won't make the process go any faster.
As others have said, rebuilt d5 are hard to come by, some folk have diy'd it and not ended well. Most mftr will do a crate new short block, a long block, aswell as reman options. New is overkill and will be priced as such, if volvo can get a "volvo" reman engine I would do that and put it in the car as it sounds like the rest of it is in great shape.