About 3 years ago a lady posted on CT with an ongoing problem about a manual transmission on her Subaru. Numerous posts led me to believe she was being badly yanked by the repair shop.
This shop had apparently done some work on the final drive in the transmission and also botched the reassembly.

To properly set up a Subaru transmission requires a considerable amount of expertise even when the large box of special tools is available; and even more when they're not.

They not only ignored things like backlash, preload, etc, etc, but botched the case half reassembly.
Both the main and countershafts are supported by large bearings which have a small hole in them. The left side case has small pins on the bearing saddles which fit into the bearing holes to prevent the outer race from spinning in the case.
When reassembling the trans making sure the pins mate into the holes is extremely critical. If not done right, the bearing and or case can be severely damaged when the case half bolts are tightened.
Apparently someone missed a few pins when putting it back together. (Very easy to do as we're only talking about 3/32" at most.)

Push came to shove and I felt strongly enough about this to give her my email and offer more personal advice. Six months or so went by and she emailed to ask if I could help her out by giving a statement about my qualifications and pics of what I was talking about. Since I had several Subaru transmissions apart that was not a problem so I mailed her a statement about myself and half a dozen pics.

I never heard from her again and wondered a few times what ever happened with this deal. (She lives in Houston, TX)
Recently I got a mail from her after all of this time thanking me for the help. She actually had to take this shop to court as they refused to stand behind this problem. She produced the pics and the letter about myself along with condensed notes explaining the setup procedure and the bearing holes/locating pin thing and she won her case. The shop was ordered to refund every penny to her. (4 digits)
It was not only a surprise to hear from her but also that any statement from an out of state resident would be granted any weight in a TX court.
Guess things do work out sometimes and it was great to hear she got a refund. My original feeling was that the shop would settle this rather than even go to court so I was wrong on that count.

Wow. Outstanding!

Kudos to you for your time and efforts to help.

---

Marnet
...still reading, still learning!

I don't remember exactly how much money was involved in this but it seems like it was about 1700 dollars or something like that.

My feeling originally was that she could very well lose this case since she knows nothing about mechanical things, odds are the judge doesn't either, and someone from the shop could talk their way through the proceeding by spouting nonsense that the judge and plaintiff could not follow.

I had hashed over the technical notes and revised them 3 or 4 times trying to make them as simple and as concise as possible so the plaintiff would not have to wrestle their way through any explanations about something they knew little about. Must have worked and the shop must have assumed they could, as an ex-boss of mine used to say, dazzle them with BS.

In regards to those locating pins and bearing holes, I've even managed to miss a few now and then as it's very very difficult to determine when it's located as it should be. However, when the case halves are assembled and a couple of bolts are snugged up it's noticeable if the assembler is paying close attention. In my case I knew better and popped the case half back off before really tightening those bolts down and causing any damage.

I don't do it for any pats on the back. It's one thing for a shop to misdiagose a problem (easy to do with modern cars) but one thing that ticks me off is when a shop starts trying to lay off utter BS on someone who has handed them four figures of money.

I could even relate a few similar stories about things I've had a direct hand in sorting out.