Friday, March 19, 2010 - 08:42 pm, by: Lauren Pintaro(Laurenic33)
Hey all,
So i have quite a bit of work needed to get my Soarer running smoothly.
I've gotten an estimate from Manta Automotive (Richmond, SA) to do the following:
1) replace front and rear brake pads 2) replace cam belt 3) replace drive belt 4) replace water pump 5) full service & tune including spark plugs, oil filter, fuel filter, etc etc
Those are pretty much the main things being looked at, and i was given an estimate of $1500 - $2000.
Does that sound about right?
Just want to make sure I am being given a fair price for all that, I know the timing belt and fan belt are bigggggg jobs so to me this estimate sounds reasonable.
Friday, March 19, 2010 - 09:05 pm, by: James Buchan(Jrbuch)
I payed $1700 for my major Lauren, which included replacing the cam belt and water pump plus spark plug leads, oil filter, air filter fuel filter, coolant, and transmission service etc.
I'll tell you another thing for free. When sourcing the parts, the guy at Toyota told me there was nothing wrong with my water pump as it wasn't leaking and tried to save me some money. I got all the other parts and went to my mechanic for the service. They then discovered that the waterpump was leaking and sourced another one (note - not genuine) which resulted in 1 month later a massive massive leak of coolant. This pretty much grounded the car. The mechanics agreed to fix it all for free - and the cost of the water pump - which I went and bought from Toyota and they reimbursed me.
The whole problem with this story is that just after I found it was leaking, I took it to them and they diagnosed the issue and said they'd do all the work for free. The catch? The mechanics were shutting down the garage for three weeks while they were at an automatic transmission conference in Las Vegas, so I had to wait three weeks with my car sitting in the garage.
Ohh how I wish i'd listened to my instincts and bought the genuine Toyota pump when getting all the other stuff. Not worth it to save a few bucks.
Friday, March 19, 2010 - 09:09 pm, by: Lauren Pintaro(Laurenic33)
Ok cool so $1500-$2000 sounds about right then for everything I have mentioned doesn't it.
Phew!
Oh wow... well Manta reckon they get all their parts from Toyota if they can, so hopefully fingers crossed and double triple crossed that doesn't happen to me!!!
I've had enough issues with this car lol I got stuffed around BIG TIME from another mechanic got charged almost a grand to fix leaking power steering pump, and they didn't fix squat. Then finally few weeks later got recommended to take it to Manta and for $400 they fixed it perfect.
Very hard to find a trustworthy and fair priced mechanic these days, hopefully Manta do a good job for me this time around as well
Friday, March 19, 2010 - 09:19 pm, by: Adam Lonergan(Alchemistal)
I would get an actual price $2000-$1500 = $500. $500/$1500 = 33% which is a pretty poor quote if they have seen the car IMO. You should also be getting leads in that price on top of the items you have mentioned. I'm sure more mechanically minded people will recommend you do your idler bearing as well as they are cheap (~$30 from any suburban bearing place if my memory serves me correctly) and are something you don't want to be doing a month after a major service as the labour is the expensive component.
Friday, March 19, 2010 - 09:21 pm, by: Wess McManus(Bar)
I had Steve from Manta do the major service on my v8 (timing belt, water pump etc). Steve did a great job, repairs were completed ahead of schedule and final price was under the original estimate. Highly recommended.
Friday, March 19, 2010 - 10:11 pm, by: Lauren Pintaro(Laurenic33)
They saw the car last time it was in but thing is they aren't able to tell me for sure whether i'll need things like the fuel filter and whether both front & rear brake pads will need replacing so $1500-$2000 is their estimate.
I've budgeted for $2k just in case anyway so won't be a problem if it reaches that price, as long as it's justified of course.
Oh that's great to hear Wess that gives me some hope lol and it will be Steve doing all my repairs too so that's good!!!
Dan McColl Goo Roo Victoria (The Nazi State) Active V8 and the Beast.
Friday, March 19, 2010 - 10:19 pm, by: Dan McColl(Hoon)
Adam, you'll find most mechanical shops reluctant to give an actual quote on a 20 year old car. Lost of mine traps to fall into.
As an example, there may be corroded bolts that break, which can easily add 3 hours labour to a job, lots of other problems like that can arise, through no fault of the mechanic, but if they quote then the customer will get up in arms if they try to recoup their extra costs.
Usually they will give an estimate and then charge you the actual hours spent on the job. This could well be under or over their estimate.
The problem with doing a quote is that you need to allow enough extra to cover possible or likely issues, and then you price yourself out of the market.
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