The repair is how much?!?

I took my car, a 1998 Ford Taurus, in to the dealership on Thursday to find out what was wrong with it. The car had started making a really loud rattling/whining noise whenever I would accelerate. It also felt like it was miss firing if I was going between 20 and 30 MPH.

The service center rep from the dealership called me Friday morning. They said it needed a replacement camshaft sensor and synchronizer. The cost of the repair would be $440 plus tax. The rep also said I needed to replace the spark plugs and wires. The cost for the plugs and wires was an additional $250! I knew that was too high because I can replace the plugs and wires myself for less than $100. I told them I’d call them back and let them know if I wanted the repair done.

I went to the local Auto Zone to check the price of the parts (sensor and synchronizer). If I purchased both of the parts myself, it would be about $80. The problem is that I am leery of doing that kind of work on my car. If the synchronizer and sensor aren’t installed properly, the car would either not run or run really poorly. Plugs and wires I can handle because I’ve done that before. Messing with the camshaft operation? Not so much.

A sales rep at Auto Zone told me about a local car repair shop that had recently opened. He said the shop had Ford Certified mechanics on staff so I should check there. I called the shop and told them what the dealership had quoted as being wrong with my car. They said the miss firing was probably caused by the faulty synchronizer so they didn’t think I needed new plugs. Their cost to replace the sensor and synchronizer was less than $200 (parts, labor and tax included). Even after paying the $65 diagnostic charge at the dealership, I still save over $200 versus what the dealership quoted me.

The car is supposed to be ready tomorrow. I might go ahead and replace the plugs next weekend. Advanced Auto Parts or Auto Zone is always having a sale on plugs and wires so I’ll just have to see who has the better deal.

The world is governed more by appearance than realities so that it is fully as necessary to seem to know something as to know it. – Daniel Webster

10.Jun.07 General

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “The repair is how much?!?”

Bryan Price | June 10th, 2007 at 3:52 pm
Ouch.

Of course, that’s one of the reasons why I gave my ‘90 Marquis and bought a new car. After 200,000 miles, it needed a new/rebuilt/junked air conditioner (which isn’t really a luxury living in Florida!) and it had developed another short that would drain the car battery in a day. Did I mention that this had happened before with the car, and the technician couldn’t find the fault (it was somewhere on the firewall), so he rewired the first one. He would shoot me if I brought it again with the same thing happening. That it leaked oil fairly fast (valve covers).
gb | June 10th, 2007 at 7:05 pm
Same thing happened to me recently… Drive a ‘98 Blazer that needed a new catalytic converter. I would have let it go for a little bit but I noticed that it was drinking gas. Took it to the dealer, they didn’t charge me a diagnostic fee but did confirm it was the converter and wanted to charge me almost $600 and it would take a week.

Took it to a muffler shop from there, about a block north, and they had it done under an hour for $250. Now I’m getting about 300mi to the tank, where I was getting about 225 (before the converter putzing out)