Jsailor24

I recently got my car back from the shop. They found a leak in the runner gasket so they replaced those. They replaced the brake booster also. They charged for 6 hrs. labor on the runner gaskets. I took out the plenum and tried to get the runners but didnt want to mess w/ fuel rail/ injectors etc. The other problem was i couldnt get to the rear bolt drivers side. How could this take them 6 hrs? I can get the plenum off in 30 mins. and all of the runner bolts after that except for the ?forementioned? thanks a lot for the help. This guy is a client of my dads so i dont really know what to think. :rolleyes:

Scoob

I'll bet you 2:1 that they charged you book time, not actual work time.

Vic'89

Most shops charge book time and about 5/6 hours could be right.

Since you took the plenum off, the runners would have been easy.

Vic

nickd

I'll tell you what I think, he took you for a ride. I don't know what kind of work your dad does but since this guy is a client I would mention this to your dad, maybe he can return the favor ;)

I have pulled the TPI setup many times and if that can be done by an amateur in less than an hour there is no way in way in hell it can take a trained mechanic 6 hrs to change 2 runner gaskets,
even if he was totally s h i t faced and had only a screwdriver and a hammer to work with.
just my .02





[Modified by nickd, 5:40 PM 11/21/2001]

ZBRA

LOL and DITTO. :jester

Phil-tha-Rush

I dont understand these questions? :troll


When a mechanic works on your car to find/solve a problem, there is uasually a "troubleshooting" phase. For this, you should pay the hourly rate.

Once the mechanic passes this phase, he will approach you with what he believes the problem to be.

At that time, an estimate for cost of repairs is discussed, and should be in writting. Once in writting, he is expected (by law in some states) not to overrun the estimate by more than a certian percentage.

Leave insructions to place a call to you in the event that "unforseen", and additional repairs should be made.

Remember, this man works for YOU and is on YOUR payroll.

Any mechanic, or sop that is not willing to do these things, should be avoided.

If you simply hand the car over to the mechanic, and say "fix it", and send me the bill...two things will happen.

1) you just added to his bank account
20 you will almost always be unhappy with the event.

learn from it.....next time, get aan estimate (in writting) :seeya

Ed Ut

Yep, must say I agree 100%

SunCr

My Alldata account shows the following breakdown for dealer book (warranty/standard): 1.5/2.1 plenum; 1.5/2.1 rightside; and 2.7/3.8 leftside.

gerry c

That depends on the shop you go to. I was lucky to find AND get accepted as a customer by my mechanic Dale. Dale is an older (about 75 or so) guy that runs a small shop (one other employee) that is pretty far off the beaten path. He will fix about anything (except heater cores.... says his back won't take it anymore). Only problem with him is he is slow at times. I can take ANYTHING to him, tell him what I think the problem is and just tell him to fix it. He'll check what I tell him first, fix it if he agrees and check anything else that may be wrong and give me a call when it is done.

To give you an idea of how honest he is, I had my GMC truck stolen and the morons ran out of gas, tried to prime it by pouring gas down the carb and had a BAD engine fire. They also torn up the steering column and stole the battery. Insurance was paying for repair.... Adjuster looked at it, and gave the okay to repair and told me to bring them the bill. His total bill was $385 for the repairs which were like new repair. Insurance was amazed..... I was told they had allowed for up to $1500 for the work. They asked him if they could send him more work and he told them NO! that he had enough work and did not need anymore.

Another example, I am restoring my wife's '72 Buick Centurion Convert that she bought new. The engine was worn out (250k miles) and I picked up a '72 duece and a quarter with a good engine (the rest of the car was pretty cherry also) and had him pull the engines and swap the one. While he was at it, he decided to swap rotors machine them (they interchanged) and put in new front pads. He also serviced the trans (change filter etc.). The drove it out after paying him all of $450!!!! Of course, he had it there for a month because I told him I was not in a rush, so he just worked on it in his slack time.

You don't find too many like Dale though..

jcazin

I don't understand your concern. You get a quote up front as to what it's going to cost, and you make a decision as to accept it or not. If these parts were so easy for you to remove and replace, what was stopping you?

Diagnosis is part of the labor bill- it's not just the actual time spent spinning wrenches.

mrvette

Tell you what, I spent about 20 years in consumer electronics business, TV shop manager, if you will, part time owner too.....
when a set came in for an estimate, it was repaired all the way for any reasonable fault that was a known high failure rate....ran the parts bill up a bit, but usually no more that 50-100 bucks....in 70's dollars....I"m talking console TV's worth 800++ bucks/copy.....
NOW, before you all go off, the jobs were done honestly and COMPLETELY, leave NO area of the internals untouched, clean everything, I didn't have to cheat the manufacturers did that for me....in the design....
Now a days, the parts are so hideously expensive, it's impossible to replace anything but JUST the failure point, and be LUCKY of find it, first attempt...

in the car business, things are much the same....
tuneup....sure....points, plugs, wires, cap...overhaul carb, maybe R/R intake manifold....change antifreeze, put thermostat and rad cap....

today though, lucky to find the troubles at all....much more time involved...and the L98 injections is a nitemare...it took that mechanic about 3-4 hours to do the job.....but the processing time, billing time, the rest adds up too....

but in the final analysis, I do all my own work....

GENE

importeater

6hrs is book time for changing the manifold base gaskets as well as the runners. basically it sounds like they looked up manifold change in the book & just called it good. 6hrs is about how long it takes to do the whole job but the base is at least half of the time. in your case 3hrs would have been about right maybe even 2. as far as trouble shooting it's not time consuming to test for vacume leaks or anything else really.

0ski_dwn_it

Guys,
Not to dissagree with you all, but I am taking my 89 intake off and also the heads. I have at least 4 hours of time into it already and the manifold is still on. Granted I am tagging everything, even things I probably don't need to so the reassembly goes quicker, but holy hell, I think six hours is pretty fast. :crazy: I thought I was doing pretty good at the rate I am going. It is my car too, so I plan on paying very close attention to detail. And I should also add this is the first time I have ever attempted to do such work. For those of you that work on these engines daily I could see a much faster time being possible. Its always easier the second time. With that being said, is this the forst time this guy has worked on a vette? I had my mechanic 2 yrs ago change my manifold gasket while I was in Ireland. When I got back and asked him how it went he said "Its not the easiest thing to work on". I consider Mike to be a very very compitent mechanic. This is just my $0.02.

Romeo Barrera

We need a smiley with :bs this guy handing you a jar of vaseline.

Jim-K

What if you just hung around the shop and watched how long they took, and how much of that time they spent actually working on the car? Would it still be expected to pay for 6 hours of labor when they spent 3 hrs doing it, 1 of which fussing around in the office with other customers?

Black85L98

Bummer. It would not take me that long but I don't have to pay rent, insurance and all that good stuff. Find a good small shop like the one the guy talked about above or do your own work. If you don't like the quality of the job make yourself do it over. Feel free to give yourself a good cussing. :D

Rob 93ZR-1

If the book calls for a certain amount of time, that is based on an average of many mechanics w/ hand tools. If a guy invests in trick air tools and has done the job a hundred times, he will get it done faster than book. That's how he affords to eat. A good mechanic will typically get 12 plus hours done in an 8 hour day. On the other hand, he has to eat it or should if he doesn't know what going on an the job takes longer.

BBA

Dude...ski_dwn_it

Ok, I'm an x-mechanic turned PC geek. I can pull the ENTIRE intake manifold, runners, plenum, throttle body and egr valve and replace all gaskets and put it back together and be driving in less than 4 hours, add 20 minutes if you want new oil and antifreeze.

Yes, the second, third and fourth time takes immensely less time to do it...unless you have no ability to figure out tricks to save your time and effort.

Heck...I used to routinely replace Dodge NEON head gaskets in less than 40 minutes! ( yes, really good tricks but it ends up with a new head gasket that does not leak oil out the back ). I have rebuilt Dodge Caravan 4 speed auto ( 41LE ) transmissions...drive in and drive out in less than three hours total time ( yes, rebuild....not exchange ).

Basically, you have to keep in mind that professional mechanics learn tricks to get things done very quickly with almost no come backs...unless they are shade tree backwoods boys out to try and take your cash.

So, based on what I used to see for dealer warentee times ( I worked for dealerships ), 6 hours is 'stuck it to ya' time.

But then again just an opinion....and after all, whats an opinion worth? :bs

88L98

the first time i ever took a TPI setup off of a car and put it back on, it only took about two and a half hours, with including driving to go get torx bits, rtv, and new intake gaskets. now pulling the intake would be a 45 minute to hour for just tearing it down. 6 hours to find a vacuum leak and replace a runner gasket is pretty sad if you ask me. looks like the guy forgot to use vasoline.


[Modified by 88L98, 11:09 PM 11/26/2001]