Garage charge for estimate

bartelbe

Ripoff Britain alive and well, 400 plus quid to change a gauge or sender unit?

Reason I avoid garages and do all my own work.

AdrianC

bartelbe said:

Ripoff Britain alive and well, 400 plus quid to change a gauge or sender unit?

Reason I avoid garages and do all my own work.

Fred, is that you?

If the fault is in "the gauge", it's probably a complete cluster that needs coding to the body control computer.
If the fault is in the sender, it may well be integrated with the pump.

feolojad

bartelbe said:

Ripoff Britain alive and well, 400 plus quid to change a gauge or sender unit?

You've not been able to change just the petrol gauge since the 1980s. The gauges form part of the instrument binnacle and for any car manufactured this side of the turn of the millennium those gauges often are no longer traditional analogue needle movements, they're digitally controlled jobs that can be set to any position by the ECU that controls the instrument binnacle.

Unlike you a garage isn't going to be willing to go ferretting around a breakers yard to pull a set of gauges out of a car, dismantly two sets of binnacles and start swapping bits around until they get a working one. They're going to get a new replacement and that comes only from the manufacturer. Also with modern cars with some of their security systems it can involve actually having to code the new binnacle to the car which is often a main dealer only job.

facade

feolojad said:

 Also with modern cars with some of their security systems it can involve actually having to code the new binnacle to the car which is often a main dealer only job.

I have to question why they do this.

It doesn't seem to stop the cars being stolen, but it does make it much more difficult to replace parts cheaply with breakers yard stuff. Almost as if it was some intent to force people to use the dealer network....

I suppose they will say it makes breaking stolen cars less profitable, so no one steals them- except for body parts engines & gearboxes that is

dipsomaniac

Bad design for the punter. There is a theme developing here.

In a ideal world they would be separate accessable modules you unplugged

SteveJW

facade said:

I suppose they will say it makes breaking stolen cars less profitable, so no one steals them- except for body parts engines & gearboxes that is

Even gearboxes can be problematic, friend bought a Volvo automatic with a gearbox issue, it needed programming to the car

Herzlos

Estimates are free, as in you phone and say "How much do you think it'll cost to fix X?" and they reply "It's probably about £Y".
They've charged you for the diagnostic work to determine what was wrong, which would almost certainly have been waived if you got the work done. Do you expect them to do the diagnostic work for free?
That work has already cost them a repair bay, mechanics time and in this post-covid environment some cleaning time as well. Unless they were deserted they've almost certainly had to delay a paying job to do your diagnostic.

That's a pretty standard operating model at most repair type places.