First of all, I work at a local Honda dealer as a flat-rate line tech. Been here for close to 4 years. I know most of the in's and out's.

My dad needed a VA insp. but I was too busy at the time to do it for him. So he took it to Lake Ridge Auto Care. As far as I know, everything went smooth. It passed.

About a month later, my dad tells me that the car is overheating. I look it over and it seems low on coolant; no major leaks or anything. So I just added coolant and bled the system. So far so good. About a week later, same problem - overheating. I pulled the car into the shop. Looked it over with a few techs. We're totally stumped until we find some old residual coolant. Look deeper and we find that a hose clamp was removed from a coolant line. The line was a coolant passage that ran through the throttle body; either a fast idle valve or a IACV (I forget). But visibly. the hose was underneath the throttle body and very very hard to see without direct light some bending around.

The only way that it could've happened was if someone did it intentionally. I normally work on the car. It was only in LRAC's hands once for the VA insp. I think they did it. They could've made some easy cash of off my dad. That year Acura Legends were infamous for their bad head gaskets. They could've easily sold my dad a head gasket job, pretended to do it, replace the clamp, and bam, money in the pocket.

Sooo yeahhh, thats how it goes. Did they do it? Maybe.