A mechanic has taken to TikTok to explain a situation in which he and his shop in Santa Fe Springs, California, were blamed for a suspension failure on a 1999 Lexus ES 300. It led to a six-week ordeal in which they were chased by the owner of the car.
Concept 3 Performance (@concept3performance), an independent shop, explained it all in a video that was just over four minutes long on TikTok. At the time of writing, it has already had over 736,000 views and has a simple caption that reads “customer complaints.”
The situation revolved around a 1999 Lexus ES 300 that had come into the shop for some suspension work. Notably, it had come in for some air suspension work, as well as a few other things, at the request of the owner. It was soon after this that the blame game started.
It led to an angry customer calling the shop, shouting down the phone and blaming them for a suspension failure on the Lexus. The shop wasn’t happy, but it was while they waited for new parts to arrive that they soon discovered why the suspension had failed. And it wasn’t the shop’s fault.
What Went Wrong With the 1999 Lexus ES 300?
@concept3performance Customer Compliants 🤣😠– – #customercomplaints #concept3 ♬ original sound – Concept 3 Performance
According to the mechanic, the Lexus had air suspension fitted to it when it came to their shop. The suspension, or bags, had been installed about a month and a half before the problems with the customer began. It was around that time when the angry calls started, with one coming as early as 7 am to the independent garage.
“Blows us up [expletive] at 7 o’clock in the morning,” the mechanic in the video said about the customer. “My front struts are not working, not one, both,” the customer added. The customer then offered a theory, saying that he had driven over a pothole and thought he messed up, causing the suspension to fail on the Lexus. But that confused the workshop.
Despite that, replacement parts were ordered to fix the customer’s car. It was during this time that they were chased for six weeks by the customer, who demanded to know how his car was doing and what state the 1999 Lexus was in. During that time, the mechanic went around the car to see if he could find out what had gone wrong. That led to an interesting discovery.
Receipts Indicated How the Lexus Had Failed
The mechanic had found a set of American Tire Depot receipts in the car, plus a set of tires that he did not recognize. This confused the mechanic, as at the time of the work it had been running a ‘stretch.’ In other words, stretched tires, which are narrower but pulled onto a wider wheel. These are quite common in the modified and ‘bagged’ scene.
However, the new tires were not stretched. The receipt showed they had been bought on June 22nd, and the customer called on June 23rd. Putting two and two together, the mechanic realized he had blown the tires driving home after having them fitted. They had blown through the ‘bags’, ie caused the suspension to fail, on the way home.
How Had the Tires Caused the Suspension To Fail?
In short, the tires had rubbed a hole into the bags for the suspension. They were too big and rubbed against them, unlike the stretched ones that had previously been in the car. They would not have caused the damage to the Lexus. So, as it turned out, new tires that weren’t quite the right size had ruined an entire set of suspension on the classic Lexus.