Auto Repair: Worth it to buy part yourself & take to shop to be installed?

Looks the the CV joints in my '92 Suburu Legacy are cracked. I need to get them repaired before going on a cross-country trip at the end of the month. I’m also looking to do this with the least amount of damage to my wallet!

Is it worthwhile to track down the CV joints on my own & then take them to the shop to be installed? I’m assuming that the shops mark the parts up quite a bit. I’m hoping to find a better deal at Autozone, or online.

So, will most shops let me do this? Or do they insist that the parts are purchased through them? Would I actually save a significant amount of money doing this? I’m looking to take it to a nationally branded shop (Firestone, etc). Just don’t know enough about the local independent shops & don’t know how to find out about them…

Anyone have any experience or information to share?

Don’t know any local mechanics? Go to cartalk.com and search for one recommended by folks in your locale. Then call’em and find out what they say about the situation.

Can’t not trust Dewey, Cheatem, and Howe!

It’s about 3/4 down on the right side of the page, labeled “Mechanics Files.” Put in your zip code and there you go.

If you don’t know Car Talk, it’s the website of an National Public Radio show that has been airing on Saturday mornings for about 20 years, and has a devoted following.

Many years ago I worked at an auto parts store and the view of most mechanics in this regard was similar to what you might expect if you walked into a restaurant with your own food and asked them to cook it for you.

Long story short, they make money off both the parts and labor, and if you bring in your own parts they will likely just hike the labor charge to make up the difference. And you’ll probably pay more overall because you’ll be buying your parts at retail, whereas your mechanic buys them at wholesale and marks them up to retail for you. (Yes, AutoZone would be cheaper than buying from a dealership, but you’ll likely still pay about the same price the mechanic would charge, plus a hiked up labor charge.) So the overall effect would be that it would very likely cost you MORE money than if you just let the mechanic handle it all himself.

Plus the mechanic will likely peg you as either a cheapskate or a dolt, and either way he won’t be inclined to take you seriously or treat you (or your wallet) with respect.

A good alternative might be to try to think of a friend or relative who may be friendly with/related to a mechanic who would agree to install the parts for you as a favor. I don’t think you’ll accomplish anything worth your trouble otherwise.

I attempted to install my own alternator once. I was unable to do it, so I took the vehicle and alternator to a local shop and asked them to install it for me. They refused because I did not buy the alternator from them. I had to allow them to install an alternator that they supplied, and then I returned the one I had purchased previously.

Besides refusing to install parts you bring in there are other problems if they will install it. They won’t guarantee the parts obviously, and if the part goes bad you definitely won’t get free labor to replace the part two days later.

I got to know a local mechanic with a small shop years ago and this is what I do. I have a real old car (87 Mazda 323) so I buy stuff for cheap off the Net (people dumping old stock), go talk to him to negotiate a price (much lower than chain places), he calls me when he has an open time slot and I take it in. He get’s a job when he’d otherwise be idle and I get a repair job for quite cheap. He also knows that I’ll be back and I recommend him to others.

I used to be on good terms with my “local” mechanic - whenever I had a problem, he would give me two quotes - one for new parts, or he would ring round the wreckers for me to find reconditioned parts.

He knew I was a student with limited budget so I guess that helped, but this sort of thing is / was very common.

I’m an auto repair professional. I have my own shop. I strongly advise against it.

Let’s start with the actual problem. “CV joints are cracked” makes no sense. CV joints don’t crack. CV boots can crack, but there’s a big difference between replacing CV boots and replacing CV joints. Understanding this critical difference and using the correct terminology is not simply an exercise in pedantry, it’s vital to properly evaluating what needs to be done. Getting it wrong can easily lead to spending money on repairs that aren’t needed. If you don’t fully understand what needs to be done and why (and part of that understanding is knowing how to express it accurately), you’re setting yourself up for wasting money.

If a CV boot is cracked, then the joint inside will lose some grease and get contaminated with water and dirt. This will shorten its life. Decades ago, it was wise to replace the boot to maximize the life of the joint, as the repair was to replace the joint with a new one, which was rather expensive. Things have changed, though, and now the repair is to replace the whole drive axle with a remanufactured one. The reman axle has remachined joints and new boots (two per axle), yet costs less than one new joint. On most cars, it costs at least half as much to replace a boot as to replace the axle, and in my opinion is not cost effective. I usually advise my customers to forgo replacing the boot, wait until the joint actually starts to go bad, and then replace the axle. It is typically quite a while, often a year or two, before it gets to that point.

If a CV joint is worn (it’s virtually always an outer joint - the inner ones have very little stress), the typical symptom is a rapid repeated clicking noise under acceleration in a tight turn, like a parking lot maneuver. Eventually the joint will fail, at which point the car won’t go - it’s like being stuck in neutral. But again, I’ve seen cases where the joint can last over a year after the clicking starts.

In sum: if the only symptom is a torn boot, I’d let it go; if a joint is worn, it’s probably not urgent, but is probably wise to fix it before heading on a long trip.

Now on to your actual question. The longstanding convention in auto repair is to generate some profit from labor charges, and some profit from markup on parts sales. But what’s being sold is a repair, and while its labor and parts components are priced separately (unlike in a restaurant), that’s for accounting purposes and not because they are meant to be sold separately. Any shop with decent business sense is not going to forgo the parts profit - they’re either going to refuse the job or bill enough under labor to maintain their profit structure. And this means there’s no savings to be had, just some extra work on your part.

Pricing aside, there are other potential problems with using customer-supplied parts. As mentioned above, you’ve got no warranty. All too often the parts are wrong for the car, or of poor quality. A good shop wants to do a good job and guarantee it, and to do so they need to be in control of acquiring the parts. Short-circuiting this process tends to generate problems, not savings. It’s just not a wise approach.

I agree…your local mechanic’s price includes the profit he makes on supplying the part. The thing I’ve noticed…there is a huge markup on car parts. Once my car needed a new antisway bar (in the front). The dealer quaoted me $320.00, installed. I was able to find the part from JC Whitney (for $80.00). I installed it myself.

My mechanic buys parts at wholesale and charges retail (and he’s very upfront about it.) If I have some weird custom part or accessory, he’ll be happy to install it for me, but, as noted upthread, there’s no guarantee on the part or reinstallation if it doesn’t work.

However, my mechanic also knows where to find a cheaper part of similar quality, when he thinks I can get buy with a used or rebuilt part instead of a new one, and whether to replace a single component or an entire subassembly. I’ve shopped around considerably on things like tires and batteries, and I know my mechanic can make me a better deal than I can get for myself.

Maybe a dumb question, but why don’t they just make all their profit on labor charges?

I’n not cars, I’m computers but I know the answer. Especially if a warranty issue manifests I am often looking at fronting the cost of the parts for replacements.

I was going to try and replace a heater core a while back so I bought the unit and started unhooking things. I soon realized I was in way over my head and took it to a service station. I went in to fill out the work order and the guy asked me if I had the part. I’ve never had a mechanic ask me that before! I said as a matter of fact I do, and they only charged me for labor.

I’ve been back a few times: CV axle and power steering pressure hose. Both times, same deal.

Part tradition, part business sense.

It’s not really feasible to provide auto repair without furnishing both the labor and the parts and materials needed. While a few people may like the idea of providing parts and just paying for labor, most don’t want to be bothered with it. It’s also not always possible to know in advance of actually working on the car just what will be needed, and it’s extremely inefficient to have a job held up while waiting for a customer to get additional parts. The shop needs to be able to provide parts.

Given that, it’s really lousy business to sell something for only what you paid for it. There are costs involved providing parts - not just the purchase price, but getting them in hand, handling and stocking, liability (providing warranty), and having money tied up. If a business is buying and reselling a part, it would be foolish - hell, stupid - to not make money on that.

Now, it might be possible to devise some pricing structure that, on paper, sells parts for cost while charging enough for labor to cover the profit needed on parts. But to what end? It’s going to cost the customer as much anyway (or else the shop will go out of business), and it would take a fair amount of time and effort to create a workable system. Why bother when there’s already a functioning model for pricing auto repair that works rather well?

I just replaced the CV joints on my '92 Nissan about this time last year.

The shop quoted me $1k to do it, so instead I bought the parts for $200, and with about $50 in tools (special deep socket, cotters, replacing all the tranny fluid that I spilled, extra rag box, etc…) got it done myself in a single day.

I’m not a gearhead at all, I pretty much change my own oil and that’s about it. CV axles aren’t too bad, they’re right under the car so you can just jack it up and drop them out.

Otherwise, the best approach would be to talk to the shop first, then buy parts if they’re OK with it. This works better with people that have seen you before.

I know the current model is OK, I did not expect it be changed. But there are repairs where the parts cost very little so there is almost no part profit in those cases. Maybe that doesn’t happen a lot but it happened to me. I had an oil leak that was fixed by cleaning out a part, no new parts were needed. BTW, I was not talking about the customer buying the parts, that is way too much of a mess.

In my experience, it is not a certainty (by a long shot) that your parts dealer will give you the right part. This happened to me repeatedly in the 70’s and was the main reason I stopped working on my car. I would try to install it without success, go back to the parts place and complain. they would swear up and down that this was the the right part and I would try again. When I complained to my mechanic about this, he said “I’ve been in this business thirty years and they still do that to me.” This situation may have gotten better in the intervening years, what with computers and all, but I would not bet any critical organs on it.
If you give the mechanic the wrong part, it will certainly end up being more expensive for you. If the mechanic gets the wrong part, he will eat it and you won’t even know.

I agree with most of the posts; the only exception I’ve found is that my mechanic is generally happy to let me go out and root through junkyards for a used part if he thinks it’s an OK situation for a used part.

Since rooting through junkyards isn’t my idea of fun, I usually let him order a new one, but he’s given me the option.

Thanks everyone for responding. I think I understand the dynamics of the auto repair industry much better…

Starving Artist–your line about bringing your own food to a restaurant really helped me understand the issue in a way that hit home for me…

Gary T–appreciate your professional opinion. Thanks for explaining what the issues are with the CV Joints. I guess what I have are cracked boots & worn joints. I’ve had the clicking sound when I turn for over a year now. Looks like I just need to bite the bullet & get the work done!

Notassmartasithought–I’m familiar with Car Talk…but I didn’t realize that they had such a great resource for finding local mechanics on their website–thanks for the tip!