Is this car repair price reasonable?

vaio

You have a point but to do it properly you need to dismantle the joint and thoroughly clean then reassemble with new grease & boot. If the joint is damaged/worn then you need a new one.

A boot is £3-£5, a joint is £15-£20 (and cheaper to the trade) so I can see an argument that in a garage planning to change the whole joint is a good idea rather than messing about dismantling & cleaning and maybe having the car blocking a ramp whilst a new joint is delivered if the old one is worn/damaged.

Throw in the 2 year guarantee you get on a new joint and it seems a no brainer to me

Joe_Horner

Personally I think I'd rather leave any dirt in there than fit some £15 Chinese-made joint, regardless of any supposed warranty!

gilbert_and_sullivan

Well if he's too expensive roll your sleeves up and DIY and find out out how easy it all is, by the time you've stripped things and replaced brake pads and removed rear drums to inspect shoes replaced a CV boot cleaned the joint out and replenished lost grease, then fixed the leaking rad somehow (aircon condensation drips would have evaporated very quickly this weather) you'll find £190 is very fair.

What is more important with this car is to find out if its in the timeframe for the camshaft bolts coming loose.

Joe_Horner

gilbert_and_sullivan wrote: »

Well if he's too expensive roll your sleeves up and DIY and find out out how easy it all is, by the time you've stripped things and replaced brake pads and removed rear drums to inspect shoes replaced a CV boot cleaned the joint out and replenished lost grease, then fixed the leaking rad somehow (aircon condensation drips would have evaporated very quickly this weather) you'll find £190 is very fair.

Nicely put, but you forgot "go out and buy the tools you'll need", which will add considerably to the DIY cost, at least for the first few jobs you tackle.

Unfortunately, as was mentioned in Das Auto* on BBC 2 recently, this country ha salways had a tendency to treat engineering / mechanics as somehow second-class skills practiced by second class people whose time is "worth" less compared to (say) managers.

Personally I'd rate Fred Dibnah as far more valuable to society than David Brent, but apparently that's an abberant viewpoint!






* well worth catching on IPlayer btw if you're interested in the demise of the UK car industry!

Paradigm

gilbert_and_sullivan wrote: »

What is more important with this car is to find out if its in the timeframe for the camshaft bolts coming loose.

Only a common problem with 2005 models I believe?

gilbert_and_sullivan

Paradigm wrote: »

Only a common problem with 2005 models I believe?

Ah thanks, i wasn't sure which years were affected...not as VX were interested.

salubrious

Joe_Horner wrote: »

The MOT requirement for brake pads is a minimum of 1mm of friction material. If they were near that you'd hope that the tester would put an advisory for them, but they don't have to. 1mm of friction material can easily become metal-to-metal in a couple of months.

It's actually 1.5mm on brake pads, but yeah i'd expect an advisory too. Not always the case though.

Joe_Horner

salubrious wrote: »

It's actually 1.5mm on brake pads, but yeah i'd expect an advisory too. Not always the case though.

Oops! Then again, you try judging to within half a mm while looking at brakes you can't disassemble anything to get at :beer:

fishybusiness

also, he said mechanic would have only be able to see front brake pads in the pit without taking the rear wheels off, so why would he mention replacing brake shoes?

The rears often have an inspection hole - remove a plastic plug, shine in a torch and you have a good idea of lining thickness