Yeah, but if there’s a problem, it’s expensive, because they have to replace it with that imported German air. Ask anyone who had the tires reinflated on a Toyota and had to get Japanese air…
“These prices are from the iAutoparts web site.”
Dealers need to take the discount money for themselves to stay in business though.
As for labor, mechanics have a book that say how long a procedure would take & then they multiply their labor rate by that number. So, if the book says three hours & they get fifty an hour, thats gonna be 150 on the estimate form. Yep, that’s how it is even if the job only takes a half hour…same for body shops. sigh.
Mechanics call it “beating the book time.” If the average time it takes a mechanic to replace an item is 3 hours, then that’s book time. If you have enough experience to be able to do it in 2 hours, then you’ve earned yourself a bonus. It takes training, time, and experience to learn how to repair vehicles both quickly and correctly, and if you’re simply better than average, then you’ve earned that extra hour’s worth of pay.
It’s the same way some SDMB members are at their offices right now getting paid $X/hour to WORK, but since they do their jobs so efficiently, they’re enjoying a few minutes posting on the message board – and getting paid for it!
As any Staright Dope reader know, it pays to be better than average.
Oh, and as a side note: a)There is no red light that comes on when your alternator stops working. If there was, it would have save sooo much time for the mechanics I have worked for/with.
b)It really shouldn’t take more than 20 minutes for a mechanic to check your vehicle’s charging system and load test your battery. And I mean 20 minutes BILLED labor time. I still don’t think the dealership really ripped anybody off in this situation, it’s just that dealerships tend to be more expensive in general (but like I said in an earlier post, they sometimes offer higher quality parts).
And, as any ** Straight ** Dope reader knows, it pays to proofread.
“a)There is no red light that comes on when your alternator stops working.”
Sure there is, its the alternator light. Don’t you have one? It lets you know the alternator is charging. Maybe you don’t have one in your car?
Anyway, our alternator light worked just fine but the new battery we bought went for a day so I took it back to the store, it was a crappy battery they said & gave us a new one & the alternator was just fine.