From all your years fixing cars (or taking cars in to be fixed), what was a fix that had a super low cost part but also super high cost labor?
What needed to be fixed? How cheap was the part? How much or how many hours was the labor?
Ford Expedition; blend door actuator @ $30, but nearly $ 350 to install....Good thing it was a company vehicle. Recently a Honda dealer wanted to charge $195 to change the manual transmission fluid (2 quarts). Went to a different dealer was $7.50 each, so $15 total for the 2 quarts. ( the other place mark up just for that was $45, and the rest $150. They tried to sell us a BS story about why it took so long. It's a manual transmission, open the fill and drain plug, drain out the 2 quarts (about 5 minutes and a couple of minutes to fill it back up and done. Really ticked me off.
After 40 years, there's really too many to list...But it's this very reason I learned to work on and fix my own vehicles; even house stuff too, carpentry, plumbing etc...
Yikes.
I had this one in mind
Blower motor resistor in my own Ford Focus, quoted me 450€ of which the part was 50€ and 4hr labour at 100€ per hour. Apparently the entire dash and plastic fascia has to be removed...
It doesn't, the resistor was 15€ from the motor parts store and it can be fairly easily accessed by removing the stereo and plastic panel behind.. Took me one youtube video and 30 minutes, including driving to and from to buy the part!
Brilliant on your part to do it yourself!
I can’t speak about actual work done as I do most of it myself. However i will say getting a price quote from Meineke for two price comparisons I needed recently were ridiculous.
1. Catalytic Converter install. Basic bolt in direct fit, 45-60 min job. They wanted 750 bucks to install a 500 buck converter. Which I could buy exact same part for 200.
2. Subframe bushing install. Bushings were 75 bucks. But they were adamant that you couldn’t get just the bushings. So they wanted to “sell” an entirely new subframe for 1450 bucks. And wanted 1600 to install it. Swapping subframe, 3 hour job. Pressing in new bushings on original, 5 hour job. On side note the 1450 buck subframe they wanted to sell me,I can buy from the dealer brand new for 700. They have some ridiculous markup on parts. And their labor is just about as ridiculous.
My fathers BMW X5 stereo malfunction:
The rear hatch actuator had failed
causing the cabin light to remain on
draining the battery
Dealer quoted a price of $3000 for the actuator and $5000 for the stereo malfunction (Needless to say we did not take this route)
Had a friend that was a service manager at BMW and he suggested disconnecting the battery for 24hrs
Also fixed actuator (total cost $275)
After that the stereo worked fine
Dealer:
Stereo:
Cost of parts $0
Cost of Labor $5000
Actuator:
Cost of parts $75
Cost of Labor $2925
For me, it was the HVAC EVAP core. A replacement core is $100, but the entire dash, and every under the dash had to be removed, to replace the core. (A complex and tedious job, which took more than 12 hours to remove, replace and properly reinstall. I'm happy to say that the independent shop I talked with this work did an excellent job. This was for a 2008 Camry).
Clutch job on a Chevrolet Corvette. It’s just a Chevy, no? (j/k) No more vehicles for me that have a torque tube (not to be confused with drive shaft).
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kFfMU2NoZHA
Those aren’t the same thing?! What’s the difference?
I remember I watched a similar video long time ago. 27 hours and over 20k bucks for an oil change.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKobwz7wJso
Now that is insane.