Legal Question in Civil Litigation in North Carolina

You have a problem very similar to the first person to sue Coca-Cola for finding a mouse in their Coke. If the Coke bottle is open - who's to say you didn't put the mouse in there yourself. If the Coke bottle is sealed with the mouse clearly inside - then you haven't been injured. Basically you lose either way. Rods and valves are internal engine parts. Even if you were the grand wizard of mechanics you couldn't say with 100% certainty they were bent or even rattling by the sound without cracking into the engine. If you did open things up, I don't blame the garage owner for saying I'm not paying for it because who's to say you didn't do the damage yourself If you didn't open up the engine and relied of your super mechanical spider-man like sense of sound - who's to say you are right or again that the garage caused the damage. Basically, you need to prove two things: 1) what the damage actually is (not just what it sounds like). To do that ya gotta take it to another garage - one willing to testify what the actually damage is and what it cost to fix it. That's the easy part. 2) ya gots to prove the original garage did the damage. That's likely gonna be the hard part. Unless you can prove the garage did the damage - you will likely lose.