Labor rate will be far north of $100/hour in Denver. Try closer to $175/hour or even more.
Labor rate will be far north of $100/hour in Denver. Try closer to $175/hour or even more.
My daughter's Saturn needed a radiator a couple of months ago. Local shop quoted a radiator and hoses for just over $600. Coolant was already replaced so it didn't need that. Seemed pretty fair, but we did it ourselves with a Koyo radiator and brand name hoses for about $150. $3K seems absurd to me, and it doesn't seem to fix the cause of the overheating. Stuck thermostat?
jwagner (Forum Supporter) Stuck thermostat?
I already ordered a thermostat too because you may be right.
Where is she located? I'm sure if a GRMer lives close, we all know 'a guy.' And yes that price quote is ridiculous.
Just in case anyone is interested in a followup on this, here it is. It turns out that the hose blew off because it's old and the clamp was loose. I'm basing that on the other end of the hose also being loose. When our daughter added coolant, she only refilled the reservoir. So the coolant was down about 2 quarts as best I can tell. The heads are a bit below the top of the radiator, so I think they survived. On a positive note, the fluids didn't mix and the compression is 150 on 4 cylinders, 140 on 2 with the engine cold. That's not great, but not horrible.
I've replaced the valve cover gaskets and am doing the intake gaskets next. There was a small leak from a cooling hose going to the throttle body, so those are getting replaced as well. Since the plugs are out, those are getting replaced along with the wires. There are some other hoses I'd like to freshen assuming I can find the molded hose or make do with a straight piece. The timing and accessory belts are fairly new.
We should be able to get some more miles out of this engine before doing a rebuild.
That's great news, sounds like she got pretty lucky. Are you keeping track of time, just to see if the shop was reasonable?
Nice work!
Some people that work at shops, on here, will leap straight to defending ridiculous mark ups, shops that just throw parts (on your dime) to diagnose things, and continue charging more as the get into the job.
Of course they deserve some markup. It's pretty obvious shops can't compete with online distributors (for all their good or bad)
But I did not get the impression the op did not do a bit of research about the price disparity, and is not comparing like for like quality wise.
With that kinda markup, the final cost would be MUCH higher. IMHO.
EDIT:
Somehow I missed the 2nd page. Congrats on things working out!
In reply to Steve_Jones :
I'm doing so much "while I'm in there" stuff that it would be hard to compare. I believe the labor for just the radiator was a little high, but getting to the intake and valve covers *was* a lot of wrenching. Ultimately, it's not a huge surprise that I can do it for less. With all of the side things getting fixed, the final bill from the shop would have been hard to swallow.
Fingers crossed that everything checks out good once it's back together and running.
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