GRIFFIN TIRE AND AUTO

Let me start my saying that I have been working on cars for 16 years and am HIGHLY mechanically inclined. I had my car towed into Griffin tire on Wilkinson Blvd in Belmont, NC because at the time I lived in a town home with no where to work on my car nor did I have time to work on it being a full time student and part time employee.

I was fine with paying someone else to fix the car for me. The car just shut off on me one day while idling. The mechanic pulled the front of the engine apart, checked the timing, said it was good then pulled the spark plugs and "claimed" to had found a smashed spark plug which meant that the engine had dropped a valve and said I would need a whole new engine. After looking at the spark plug myself it looked as though he may had dropped it after taking it out because the damage was light.

Something didn't seem right. I decided to let them not touch another thing on my car, towed it home and started check for this "dropped valve" they spoke of. After an hour of careful inspecting of the valves, I noticed all were in place and secure as they should be. I then moved on to check the timing he said was good.

I found that a tooth had broken off one of the timing gears and the timing marks were off that one spot. I put a new timing set on it, a new distributor as I noticed it too was worn out, put it all back together and started it up and it ran/still runs just fine. I spent around $400 to get it back on the road vs. the thousands the engine replacement would have cost.

This shop tries to scam people out of there money, selling people things they don't need and is way over prices. Example, a tire patch costs over $20 here but at walmart costs an even $10. On top of all this, I had to pay $140 to get my car from them even after I found out how they operate.

I wasn't even able to get my money back after I drove the car back up (2 weeks later) there and complained of the misdiagnosis. AVOID GRIFFIN TIRE STORES IN CHARLOTTE AREA!