Harold’s Automotive

Not a trustworthy establishment. I haven’t been there in a year or so now since I sold the car Harold had been working on, but I will never bring a vehicle back to him. If you expect him to work on your car, customer beware.
I brought in a vehicle that was experiencing a random, but persistent misfire. The misfire was load based and happened any time the car went up a hill, or received throttle to pass, any time at all the engine was under load. I took the car to Harold, and asked that the spark plugs and wires be replaced. That is what I was charged for, and that is what I was told was done to the car.
I got the car back with a clean bill of health, and the first hill I went up I experienced the same problem. Took the car right back to Harold, his fix this time was to throw a new catalytic convertor on it. The OEM Toyota part was almost $ 1800, he said he had an aftermarket one that will work on it for $ 700. Bear in mind that we live in California, and smog is everything.
Got the car back on the road with the new catalytic convertor, guess what? It STILL misfires in the exact same way, in the exact same conditions. By this point I was not willing to trust Harold or his technicians to work on my car properly, so I paid big money to have a mobile mechanic come and diagnose the problem at my house. Guess what? The spark plugs on the car ar at least 10 years olf and have never been replaced, same goes for the wires. Throw $ 40 worth of plugs and wires at it and the misfire is completely gone.
So by this point I have spent $ 1200 with Harold for absolutely no reason. Part of that was the cost of the catalytic converter, part of it was the diagnostic time, and part of it was the spark plugs and wires he charged me for and never replaced. After all the problems with the car, and wondering what else Harold opted not to fix, I decided I was better off selling the car and letting it be someone else’s problem.
Guess what? The catalytic converter he installed on the vehicle wasn’t California legal. On top of that, it was sized and spec’d for a small 4 cyl engine, and Harold went ahead and installed it on a 3.0l V6. The smog shop that I took it to wouldn’t even take my money and fail the car, they felt so bad. The smog tech told me before he even finished hooking the car up that I was wasting my time because that catalytic converter would not have been California legal even if it had been installed on the right size/​type of engine.
Very long story short: Harold relies on the blind trust of his patrons to stay in business, all the while screwing them over. I spent $ 1200 in less than 2 months on work that was not needed, and did not fix the problem the car had in the first place. Harold is a crook, and I hope that more people catch on to what he’s doing. I had family friends who had been taking their vehicles to Harold for over 10 years, and after seeing what had happened they will never go back. I wouldn’t take my worst enemy’s car here.

Harold knows cars and how to make them smooth… and fast… great place