Quote:
Originally Posted by Familyman 90
Sod their insurers. Your contract was with the garage.
If the garage don't pay, its them you sue, and then its up to them whether or not they then claim with their insurers.
Going direct to insurers is fine if everyone is cooperating and being cicvilised, but when theyre not you take the responsible party to court.
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^^^ 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.