Scary story

[William E. Siegel]

I usually do not tell stories, but this is one that messed with me yesterday.

I have the seller back her Lexus out of the garage. She parks it so the front end is still under the garage. The door opener is an older opener with no electrionic eyes. It functioned but the reverse was not set soft enough. No big deal.

I climb up on my ladder and open the hatch. All of a sudden I hear the door closing. I lilterally jump off the ladder and go to the swiths and push the door button. The door goes up and then starts to go down again. I let out a loud curse word. The seller comes out and starts freaking out, but moves the car before it gets hit. All this time the door is going up and down. When I finally relase the button the door goes up and down about 5 times on its own.

I climb back up into the attic. The wire for the door is run across the rafters. When the hatch was laid on the wire, it set off the door closer. I told this to the lady. You know what her response was: It wasnt like that before, you must have broken it.

I ignore her and go on with my inspection. Now I am the dumb *** inspector who broke her door closer. At the end of the inspection she calls her husband have me talk to him about the door. As I started to tell him the story he buts in and tells me that, yeah, he knows that when you open the hatch and it sits on the wire the door closes. I was like "holy s**t" - I almost ruined a Lexus over something not disclosed. His response was "close but no damage".
I was furious. I came within 2 inches of ruining a $45000.00 car for something they could have told me about. The wife says she knows nothing about the problem, and here she is blaming me all the way to the end and EXPECTING me to pay to fix her already defective wiring.

I guess some days are better than others.

[Keith Swift, PhD.]

All's well that ends well. Congratulations. A few years ago I pressure tested one only to see parts of it wizzing through the air. Spend the better part of the day waiting for a guy to install a new one, which I happily paid for. (That was the last one I pressure-tested).

[Bruce A. King]

In NC we are required to check the force reverse.

I doubt if the sellers realize this.

I look for problems that will require repair before force checks are done.

[Russell Spriggs]

Should we start a New Underwear Fund for you?

I'd have needed it . . .

[Keith Swift, PhD.]

I have about ten narratives that I can select to appear in my report. One states that the opener is old and does not have an infra-red auto-reversing mechanism, etc, so I don't ignore the safety issues. But, then again, I don't physically test for auto-reverse as I once did.

[Kenton H. Shepard, CMI]

Seems like a safety issue to me. If it flies apart upon being tested, it was defective and you've done the client a favor in finding it before it flew apart and possible injured somone. But Keith... I'm betting you actively disclaim them.


Moral of the story- Never pressure-test a Lexus.