Took my Monte in to the shop today since it needed a couple of things I'm not equipped/willing to do at home. The shop found a lot more than I was expecting! Leaking trans pan, trans cooler lines, front valve cover gasket, none of them terrible, but needed to be done before it got worse. Then there was the suspension side - control arm bushings are shot (expected), sway bar links are shot (again), and believe it or not the shop is recommending replacing the actual sway bar? Never heard of a shop recommend that before since it's generally more of a performance enhancement than anything else. They claim replacing the bar and links as a "kit". So all in all about $2800 in recommended repairs from a shop I've been dealing with for about seven years. Starting to wonder...

 

$2800......ouch

 

Far too much money.

Sadly it's not much in parts, it's just the teardowns...

 

Since they are all totally separate issues / jobs, you can tackle one at a time and spread out the pain. That will also give you time to research the sway bar question.

 

Sometimes it is more work to fix something than to just replace the whole thing.

Like when the drive-axles tear a boot. It's dumb to waste all that time just replacing a boot and buying all the grease, and putting everything back together, when for an extra 20$ up front you can have a whole new shaft, pre-greased and ready to go.

 

That seems like a lot of money for labor. I would get a second opinion on it. I bet you can get it all done for less then that. At least try to get them to give you a break on the labor.

 

Please tell me it wasn't firestone!! I took my car in for a real quick brake inspection (I thought the master was going bad), and they had the bill up close to that as well with nonsense I didn't need. I declined it and asked them to give me back my car and I would pay for the $12 brake inspection. Believe it or not the clown stripped a lugnut going back on and I had to pay $75 to get it fixed. They said it was my fault because I was missing one of the plastic lug nut covers. The funny thing is I had swapped my snow tires on and off by myself at least three times that year.

Lesson learned!

 

They stripped a lug before on my old truck and they wanted to sell me a whole set of new lugnuts at a tire place I said no then they just wanted to sell 1 for about 9 dollars again I declined. I bought a new set on the net for 10 bucks shipped.

 

You're absolutely correct. The labor for the parts I had done (anything that was leaking) ran twice what the parts cost, and the parts were far too pricey to start with, and they spent a lot more time on it than they expected. Fortunately the shop was held to their original quote and couldn't charge for overages due to labor, which was really a failure to attend to detail in the first place. At the end of the day, it was worth the cost to me to have all of the work done since I'm not going to have time to do it all myself. Still, since I only had them do about half of the work, I now have plenty of projects I can work on myself when I do have time.

 

Well, I wish I could tell you that. The truth is while I was there waiting for the car, another customer came in and I heard the tech read off the list of "issues" with his car. It was strangely similar to the list of what they had given me. Considering I'd never heard of anyone recommend replacement of a sway bar in a car, hearing them recommend that to both myself and the other customer - as well as descriptions of similar leaks and suspension issues - really set off alarms for me. Very disappointing for a shop I've been dealing with for so long, but with a change in management of the shop recently I suppose all of my relationship building is out the window and I'm back to square one.

I generally like to do what I can, but I don't always have the time, tools, or confidence to tackle everything. Having the shop across the street from the office is convenient so I tended to use them. While I still believe I'm ahead of the game after getting done what I did compared to making new car payments, I think my days of dealing with Firestone are done. Except for tires. I still like Bridgestone Grids.