You know the type, backyard mechanic, your the type always working on your own car and others notice you do good work so call you up for your services to do mods/repairs on their cars because you charge very little and work out of your home garage etc.
Now, say if someone was looking to get you to install a motor in their car, you installed it and they agreed on $500, something happens and one of the bolts broke and something costly had to be fixed on the car, but you come back with saying your not a liscensed mechanic, and they knew that etc. etc.

Does this clear your of any legality issues regarding the owner, if they decide to sue?

Reason Im asking, is i am seeing more and more DIY mechanics popping up all over the place, most just young kids who like working on their car, and others are flocking to them because they can get things done to their car for much lower prices than what a regular liscensed garage would charge them etc.

Just wondering if you DIY out there think about this when doing swaps or other work to peoples cars?

Is there a way to get out of this if you made the client sign a contract before any work was done, or since your not running a business and its an under the table job could you get screwed even more if you had to go to court because someone sued you.

I think if you made some kind of signed agreement you may be liable for something that may go wrong.

However if someone handed you cash and you told them you would do something to their car. Basically you could just deny that you did any work on their car and there would really be no way for them to prove anything.

If I were having someone like that do something to my car. I would be writing up some sort of contract. And we'd both be signing it. lol!

This is a tough one as I am a shadetree mechanic and the majority of my income is from this backyard work. I have uhhh screwed up from time to time (I know its hard to belive but its true!) But the people whos cars I have worked on have been understanding and we try to sit down and work out something that works out to the best for both of us. As an example I installed a used engine into a buick regal about 3 months ago and it was great for a week or so but then started to develop a bad miss it ended up being the camshaft, I dont know if it was because of somthing I did or just a bad part but I did take it all back apart and redid the cam and lifters for free. The customer bought the parts and I intalled them. Luckly we had discused this before I had done any work on this car and had said that if there were any problems after the job was done that I would warrenty all the work but not the parts. If you are looking for a backyarder ask for other people that the mechanic has worked for as references and ask if he will stand behind his/her work, Talk to the references and go from there... If you are the backyarder.. Stand by your work and go the extra little bit no matter what the job is because It only takes ONE unhappy person to kill your whole business, If you lose out trying to make that person happy do it even if you think your in the right. Just make them happy and then turn down their work in the future if you think theyre that hard to deal with.

You are probably more safe having no paper trail, if they don't have a receipt or any proof they don't have much of a court case. Nevermind just replacing more parts, what about if someone got hurt or killed because you didn't do a proper repair?

im saying if u have someone sign something saying they acknowledge ur not a licensed mechanic and are not liable for any damage caused by part failure or even your own mistake (in the event thats the case) then u cant be held liable (might be subject to something like not having a business license or whatever tho)

but hey if i have to sign a waiver stating that if i die or get hurt while gokarting i cant sue anyone at the go kart place even if the accident was caused by their own neglegence (sp?) then i cant see why a weekend mechanic couldnt do the same, like its basically implied that theres no warranty or anything like that when u go to a friend of a friend who works out of his garage...... to pay half the labor costs, really u get what u payfor (not to say backyard mechanics arent every bit as good as a licensed one) just that they dont have overhead like INSURANCE and whatnot to protect the shop and the customer from loss or damage due to something unforseen

Those waivers at go karting places aren't worth the paper they are written on, you cannot sign away your legal rights with any waiver.

Ya, our local go-cart track existed for about 8 months (some of them during the slushy season, wheee). In any case, they charged a FORTUNE but I was watching someone fishtail around a corner in the rain, caught an edge and flipped their kart. No movement, they flipped the car back onto it's wheels but the guy inside wasn't doing too well. Ambulance came, took the guy away and the karting place closed up shop about 4 weeks later. The mechanic (my 'friend') said it was because the guy who flipped sued and the karting place just filed for bankruptcy instead and let the insurance company take care of the damages.

You signed a wavier there too ... not worth peanuts.