Arenas Auto Service

This review is a few years delayed. I brought my wife’s car and my own car here within a year’s time to be worked on. I’ll start with my wife’s and how dissatisfied I am.
It was burning antifreeze pretty bad and there were signs of previous overheating when we bought the car. So I had the shop guy (whom I’m assuming is the owner) take a look and tell me what it needed. $ 1,300 and a new head gasket later it no longer burned any antifreeze but now it sprays it all over the engine bay. So I take it back a day later and he fixed that problem. I assume all is well for a few months and then notice it sounds like there’s an exhaust leak. It steadily got worse over the past few years and I finally took a look today to see what is going on. Turns out. they broke 4 of the 8 exhaust manifold bolts off inside the motor. And the remaining 4 were slowly backing off over time. It royally sucks because now I’d like to sell the car but thanks to their screwup it’s going to bring the value down. I don’t have the know-​how or tools to fix it myself and refuse to be charged $ 400 for someone to re tap the holes.
On to my own car. I took it in to have new lower ball joints installed on the front end. About $ 350 and an alignment later (I supplied my own parts from Auto Zone) I got the car back and noticed the front end rattled quite a bit. Fast forward a year and I’m already on my second set of tires without much of any spirited driving. I noticed that both the ball joints he put in were already history. So I go to put in new ones myself and sure enough, the nuts on top of them were not even hand tight. I bought a set of brand new control arms for $ 160 with ball joints already pre-​installed and put them in myself. Should’ve done that in the first place and saved my money.
Long story short; avoid these crooks at all costs. They are the reason I will never go to a mechanic again unless I have proof that they are trustworthy.