quote from local shop

[bendjeff]

wanted to have someone take a look that knows about some maintenance costs/items. please let me know what you all think of the attachment:

[rommaster2]

They are raping you on that oil change, otherwise to me everything looks about right for what I would expect to pay at a shop for timing belt and thermostat and radiator replacement.

I don't know about you but I would either change the oil myself or if you have someone you trust who works at one of the chain oil change places you could have them do it (sears for example charges about $50 for valvoline full synthetic, if you bring your own oil it would probably only be like $20 for labor). That said just change the oil yourself i you don't know anyone who works at the chain ones, cause quality is so all over the board at bit chain auto shops.

[bendjeff]

awesome. thanks very much. yeah, they just charged be $117 for a synthetic oil change on my armada recently. good grief!

[jalopi]

$247 for the timing belt labor? ok. that's fair, considering how many tools you need and how laborious doing a timing belt is.

$50 in labor for the oil change though? Are you fucking kidding me? This is what most places charge for an oil change by itself. Noone reasonable charges labor for oil changes (at least not by the 'hour', maybe $10-15)
Do the control arm bushings yourself; also, the radiator, shit is easy.

[MR 325]

Their pricing is on the high side. The timing belt job is actually priced fairly assuming it's including a water pump but the labor for the oil, control arm bushings, and flushes is too high. Why are they charging 1/2 hour on a coolant flush when they will be draining the coolant and pulling the radiator anyway?

[flyboyx]

holy fucking shit!!!!! 1200 bucks to do a timing belt, etc?

jesus christ!

bma charges about 20 bucks for the belt and around 50 for a water pump. about ten bucks for coolant at napa or auto zone. two gallons of full synthetic shell rotella T cost a little over 40 bucks at wall mart(you will have a few quarts left over for your lawn mower or next oil change). 12 bucks for a really good bosch filter at the same place.

the bently manual is around 50.00 to teach you to do it yourself or you can just read up on it on line.

do it yourself for less than 150 in one afternoon.

don't get me wrong....businesses are in business to make money. i support that but there is no fucking way i would pay some stupid shop that much money for such a simple task.

seems like every time i do pay a shop to do anything they fuck it up anyway.

[McGyver]

I'd say that the oil change is pretty fairly priced. It does take about half an hour to change the oil. (Pull car in, lift it, let it drain, filter, fill, lower, drive out, clean up) The shop where i worked charged about $114 for an oil change, but that's full synthetic Liquimoly and Mann filters. That's not to say that I didn't feel bad about it because I can do it for almost nothing, but people are paying for a service that they either don't know how to do, or don't want to take the time to do.

OP, seriously, learn to do this yourself. Paying a shop $1200 to service a car that probably isn't worth more than $4-5k is just crazy. Having them do the work doesn't increase the value of your car, so it's a huge waste of money. Find some local forum members, invite them and their tools to your place, buy pizza and beer for them, they teach your how to do it. They get fed, you have a $200 bill. Win-Win!

(now if only i could find some e30 people in RVA to feed me...)

[heatmakerz]

They are not lubing you up properly before insertion. Coolant flush is way to high and takes about 15 minutes to do. Oil change is way too high, t-belt (assuming that it includes water pump) is about the only fairly priced thing. OP, these jobs that you are looking into having a shop do are things that you can do yourself on a Saturday with a bentley and the googles. Just start learning and teaching yourself.

[Cabriolet]

rape. much rape. $250+ and not including front seals and waterpump. I would do all of that work for $550 including parts. ask a local e30 guy to help you out.
the contitech timing belt kit is $38. oil+filter is $35. water pump is $50. BMW coolant is $35/gal. brake fluid is $20. Tstat $10. radiator $150. then $20 for misc stuff.

everything listed is a 7 hour job.

[slammin.e28]

I think they are spot on.

[TobyB]

Looks about standard for urban garage.

Kinda high for the boonies.

t

[blunttech]

all areas of the country are different but thats fair for around here. Shops have overhead, tools, expertise, insurance and labor costs just to name a few. I always think before I bitch about costs. I can either learn to do it myself or suck it up and pay someone who is better at it than me while I earn money at what Im good at. (insert crude sexual joke here )
Bottom line is its expensive to run any small business

[bendjeff]

thanks for all of the feedback. if I had time, tools, and a garage that was not 150 degrees I would probably be doing this myself. as it is I am doing part trade on the work for their new website as well so that will soften the blow a bit. this is just to get the car road worthy after procuring it from a family member so I wanted a reputable shop to do the work for me... I do have a bentley and will be working on the car in the future so I am sure there will be stupid emergency posts coming in the future ;)

[kronus]

(insert crude sexual joke here )

A+ tramp stamp idea

[kronus]

op, they're taking you for a ride on the radiator and associated parts

nice radiators are $150 online all day, temp sensors are $12, not $40, you don't need to swap out thermostat housings on M20s during a change, thermostats are like $8, not $39.