Quote:
Originally Posted by mtbtim
Well, if you're happy with paying that bill, that's good because most people on this forum would be shitting their pants seeing a bill like that. They charged you $900 to replace a freaking steering rack. That is highway robbery. And of course they incredibly overcharged you for all the parts. They overcharged at least $300 just for the steering rack. $250 labor to do front brakes? Unbelievable. $65 labor to flush the coolant - They opened the drain plug on the bottom of the radiator and refilled it. $135 labor to replace a thermostat - it takes maybe 15 minutes to remove the lower radiator hose and the (3) nuts that hold the water neck onto the water pump. I think the AC service was close to being fair because it does take special tools to do this right.
Wrenching isn't for everyone and I do realize there's the situation where people live in apartments or condos with no garage space to work in. But, when you have the space and time to do your own wrenching, you can save yourself an incredible amount of money. Wrenching isn't always easy and you're bound to run into snags and get frustrated but in the end it's worth it in my opinion. You literally could have saved yourself at least $2000 doing your own work.
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No kidding Tim, I'd probably sell my 4R if the steering leak cost me 3k to fix. I'm a big fan of OEM toyota parts but I ended up buying some sonsong power steering lines when my started leaking, no way I was paying 600+ dollars on some lines.
I think something important to realize is that the return on value on these 4Rs are slightly better than average now but its highly unlikely it'll ever be a collectible anytime (maybe 100 years?) so I'd be careful to invest a lot of money into one.
