I am having a shop put in a new opti and water pump. They now brought up plugs and wires. To just put in OEM what would a fair price range be with labor & material?
The car has 84,321 miles and I bought it last Sept. with no history of maintenance.

if I did those myself what is a fair amount of time and is there a lot of items in the way? I just have basic skills and tools.

 

It is so much easier to do the wires with the opti off. The front driver side is a real pain. The steering pump pulley, the idler pulley and the belt are all in the way. Then it routes under the power steering pump and alternator to the driver side. The passenger side isn't too bad. If you don't use a good quality factory set where the lengths are 100% perfect they won't line up right and will touch something hot. I put a 8.5MM set of wires on my 92 that are supposed to be cut to factory length but are all slightly too long. The factory sets are 7mm and I wanted 8.5. It is on my to do list to cut my own with another 8.5 set.
As far as labor goes it shouldn't be too much more while they have this all apart for just wires. Maybe an hour or 2. If you just do the wires from scratch easily 4 hours. Plugs are an absolute pain as well. The driver side is blocked by the ASR and the brake lines. I did my plugs at the same time as I did my power brake booster. If I had to do plugs again I would take the master cylinder off, the ASR off and the smog lines that run by it. Which is what I did and it was not too bad. I would charge 4 hours to do the plugs alone if I was a shop due to having to take off all those parts. I would ask them to flush the brake fluid as well. If you don't have a history of maintenance brake fluid should be changed about every 5 years. It is often never changed as long as the brakes work. It goes bad and it what ends up ruining calipers, master cylinders and in the case of the C4 the very hard to service ABS pump.

 

Thank you for your response. They are going to charge me $800 for L&M. I thought it maybe was a 1-2 hour job total. I bought a brake flushing kit to do when it gets home as I also bought some Quickjacks.

 

That might be the going rate but that is why I do my own work.. Yes it is some what time consuming and a real pain but that $800 buys a new set of tires. Factory parts wouldn’t even cost $100 and I would use non factory wires. It is one of the reasons I will always own a C4. I can still do most of the work myself on them.

 

If they're going to charge that amount get it in writing they will route the wires correctly, use all the factory clips and have all the parts put back properly. There are wire looms and clips if not done properly will end up burning or shorting out and causing headaches down the road.

 

Thank you so much for the advice I’ll make sure they do that