Let's try this one last time...
You’re still stuck on one assumption: that this must have been missed during the install. You keep ignoring the other equally possible (and very common) reality, that the sensor or wiring could have failed, worked loose, or been unplugged after the work was done.
You keep framing this as:
“Either it was faulty before, or Ashley missed it.”
That’s a false choice.
There is a third option you keep refusing to acknowledge, it failed or was disturbed later.
And yes, a downpipe install involves the O2 sensor, but that does not mean a fault must immediately exist or show up on a scan. Sensors fail with heat. Wiring gets brittle. Plugs work loose. That can happen weeks or months later, especially on a decatted car.
You also put a lot of weight on:
“ex-BMW tech”
“trustworthy workshop”
That doesn’t mean the owner personally worked on your car, or that a junior didn’t unplug something while diagnosing. Workshops unplug sensors all the time during fault finding. You took it to two different workshops, that doubles the chance of human interference. Pretending that’s impossible is naïve.
You say Ashley should have offered to inspect the car.
But by the time you contacted him, you had already gone to two other workshops, already had a diagnosis, already formed a conclusion
At that point, you weren’t asking him to investigate, you were telling him he caused it. Expecting him to “jump in and help” after that doesn’t make sense, and that, dear sir, is on you.
You keep saying this is “just a review,” but you named a person, named a shop, and tied a fault discovered months later directly to their work without proof of when it happened. That stops being a neutral review and becomes naming and shaming based on an assumption.
You admit yourself:
“I can’t comment on the tuning.”
Yet your whole theory depends on how the car behaved with sensors plugged and unplugged. That’s exactly the part you don’t actually understand, but you’re still drawing conclusions from it.
And the biggest question you still haven’t answered:
If in January you felt the car wasn’t lekker anymore, why didn’t you take it back to the last person who worked on it? Why go to two other workshops first?
That choice was on you.
Right now, the only thing you can still prove is:
a sensor issue existed in January.
You cannot prove, when it happened, who caused it or that it was missed during the install
Yet you published a post that points the finger anyway. That’s not “just sharing experience” that’s making a public claim without evidence of cause.
Your review may have started as frustration.
But the way you framed it turned it into an accusation.
And once you name someone without proof, you open the door to exactly what’s happening now:
a bus full of people jumping on “Ashley bad” street.
That part isn’t on him.
That part is on how you chose to present it.
We clearly don’t sit around the same campfire when it comes to responsibility and ethics, so I’ll leave it there and keep my number to myself.
