Brought my car (2012 Ford Edge) to a “mechanic” friend of my husband almost two months ago to replace water pump. We agreed to pay for the parts ourselves and bring them to him to save money. We also paid like $950 cash upfront.

He later called and said he needed to replace belts and some kind of air filter low sensor, and he needed to drain the oil, so we bought all of that and my husband brought it to him.

Two days later, he said he was “locked out” of the car’s security system and needed to replace to PCM. Two weeks later the PCM arrived, but it did not work (wasn’t married to the system), so it had to be sent back. (This whole time I have been Without my car, first renting one, then borrowing from my parents while my mom recovered from surgery.)

New PCM arrived, but it was throwing codes and it couldn’t be put on a computer for another week (he had to tow it to someone else). I guess they fixed that, and it was brought back to me yesterday. He also said he’d fixed and bled the brakes (the ABS has been failing for a while though I don’t know if that is what he worked on), but it hadn’t been a priority at the time as the rest of the brake system had been recently replaced.

Anyway, I started the car today and almost immediately the car started stuttering and shaking and smoke was coming out of the exhaust pipes. I also tested the brakes and I have to push almost to the floorboard to get it to brake. We also still owe him over a thousand dollars.

Other than the water pump and the failing ABS, there weren’t any issues with the way it ran. Now, we are close to $4,000 into repairs, and it runs worse than it did before.

Did the “mechanic” mess up something majorly? I don’t think he’s a full time mechanic, but he has a garage on his property to work on his many vehicles and boats himself.