How many hours should a shop charge for track bar and drag link

 

One without an alignment. Two with an alignment.

 

Thanks. Local indy rover shop is charging 3hrs without alignment. They claim the Mitchell flat rate book says about 1.5 hours each?

 

You have to remember...you're paying the person that initial talked to you and wrote up the work order, the porter that goes out and brings your vehicle in the shop, the mechanic's time for aligning your vehicle on the hoist and doing the work, the person that cleans the shop, the porter again to park the vehicle, the person who answers the phone when you call to see if your vehicle is done, the person that sits at the payment window, the porter again when he goes out to retreive your vehicle for pickup, the owner would surely like to make something too...l would imagine, since he/she are not running a charity...and not to mention the utilities (water, electric, equipment in the shop, etc).

So, the list is long.

You could eliminate all of this by doing the work yourself.

​​​​​​​ Brian.

 

Brian, shouldn't all the things you list be built into the hourly rate and not compensated by padding the number of hours?

But to Brian's point, you could do the work yourself, depending upon what tools you have and skills you have. I did mine several months ago and it was one of the easiest things I've ever done on the truck. Alignment was easy too. You just have to very carefully measure the distance between the centers of the tie rod ends on your old track bar and adjust the new one to match. That adjusts toe-in. There are no other alignment adjustments on a DII.

 

We charge the book time for labor at our shop, the other "stuff" is built into our rate.

Occasionally the book time is deflated or inflated, at which point I explain to the customer why I am charging what I am.

Its a always a bummer when I know I can beat a book time, quote that way, then the job kicks my a$$, broken bolts, etc. Thats when I wonder why I cut the book time.

In the end, its worth it as we try to be as fair possible.

The whole reason we started parting Rovers and fixing them was because a local independent rover shop was ripping me off.

 

Thanks for the replies. The back story is a long established shop that unkown to me just changed hands. Couple strange things struck me. The girl writing the estimate didn't seem to know her crap but was very adamant that they charge from the flat rate chart plus .5 hours per item added for customer supplied parts plus an upcharge for paying with credit card. This kind of nickle and dime stuff will run off customers. I was willing to throw them a bone to see how they did but when they are quoting more hours for the work than the land Rover dealer i was less than thrilled. 6 hours labor for a hub and track bar means it will probably be my last time here. Sadly under the original owner this place had a stellar reputation.

 

Up charge for paying by Credit Card is a pretty big red flag by me, the .5 per customer supplied part is too. If they charged .5 if you supply your parts I would understand, they make some money (not much in many cases) from parts. Automotive work is often beyond someone's ability to pay via cash, in my experience shops who up charge for using CC either have a terrible rep with the CC providers, or want cash only to avoid claw backs for bad work.

If the shop is marginal as far as profit they may also want to avoid CC charges, but usually they offer a discount for cash to keep your business.

 

Yes, they could...but it's all a numbers game...and sometimes larger labor numbers run folks off. Whereas, smaller labor number X hours = most folks can't, or don't, do the math...and the shop gets the job. If I had a dollar for every time a person said..."Thought you said it would be $40.00?" "No, I said...$40.00 an hour...and the job took four hours." People hear what they want to hear...and then find out later...they should have been listening better. Obviously, the OP here did the math and weighted out the situation...as he should.

Agreed, this is a very simple job.

Brian.

 

Porters?! lol
You must be in a Union state.
We don't have those here. The mechanic gets a work order from the lead tech or service writer, and goes and gets the car themself, fixes it, and parks it back on the lot or in front of the Service dept if the customer is waiting.

The dealerships only charge parts and flat rate too, no added bs.