Darwins Child

I read your blog and I think those involved are outright lying about the need to test drive the vehicle in order to find the brake line leak. After all, how do you tell where a brake line leak is located if you're inside the vehicle as it is moving down the road? Such a repair procedure is ludicrous to downright absurd. Therefore, the one and only plausible explanation is that they simply wanted to take your vehicle for a joyride.

Knowing that there was a leak, quite possibly in the engine compartment, first, with the fully-cooled engine NOT running, the grease monkeys should have placed a large piece of brown paper or cardboard under the vehicle. Then they should have filled the master reservoir and then had somebody in the vehicle press hard on the brake pedal for a couple of minutes. Then, in order to more isolate the location of the leak along the vehicle, they should have checked the paper / cardboard for drips. Etc.

If, and only if, the above did not show the leak, should a stone cold engine have been briefly started so that the power brake would function; and this only done with a CO2 extinguisher literally at hand in order to use it to instantly extinguish any small fire that might erupt from a tiny leak. Etc.

Hopefully a competent auto tech who makes his living repairing vehicles will state the above for any legal proceeding. Luckily, the safety reasons why something similar to this should be performed will make perfect sense even to the bone ignorant; and why what the dealership did from stem to stern not only did not make any logical sense repair-wise, but also resulted in a fire whose damage was almost certainly exacerbated by the use of dry chemical fire extinguisher.

Is the dealership actually going to try to support an argument that no one could have operated or fixed the vehicle without starting a fire that would have caused so much damage regardless of what repair procedure had be used, or what safety precautions had been put in place, prior to the fire?

Such an argument could be instantly and positively refuted by the fact that you had driven the vehicle, not had it towed, to the dealership without a fire erupting either during that trip or shortly after the vehicle was stopped at the dealership with its engine at its hottest. How could it be that you could drive the vehicle without having a fire, but after the dealership drove it there was a fire?

Most likely the reason is that whoever took the vehicle for the test drive drove the vehicle much harder than you did and heated up exhaust / turbo system components to a much higher temperature. This should also be pointed out in any legal proceeding. This logic will also support your contention that the vehicle was taken for a technically unnecessary and unsafe joyride which ultimately resulted in the fire.