Is this a friend of yours ? Do you want to hit them hard or go easy on them ? Shop rate here in NC is 90-130 per hour. No clue what book hours are on the kind of job.
10 hours labor at 75.00/hour plus keystone on parts. $750.00+$200.00. $950.00 if CA$H. $1300.00 if check.
I actually didn't discuss prices or anything with him. Yes, he's a friend. I honestly took it in to keep me busy and take my mind off things. Focus on something. Try and do some normal to me stuff. Plus the extra money does come in handy. So yes, I'd like to see 1200 considering the usual attention to detail type work I do. My friend is pretty generous, so we'll see. My other friend gave me $300 for bending and flaring five 3/16" brake lines from the master and abs pump on an 06 dakota. I didn't even have to get under the car! Im pretty sure the owner is in Florida right now and won't be coming home for another week or two
OMG, my first thought was $1,200! And that is from a guy used to paying, not from a guy used to doing the billing... (Then again, $1,195 is my favorite bid on "The Price is Right", so maybe that influenced me too.) But yeah, cash discount and friendship should drop it to a grand.
My guesstimate would've been $950. Then I remembered the "New York premium" (or conversely the "corn cob discount" as you'd likely say Jason) which suddenly makes $1200 seem like a deal.
Last year,my daughter took her 2010 Civic to get an estimate for front brakes. She told them new brakes and rotors for the front. They came back with an estimate of $589 just to put the pads on and supply the pads.NO rotors though. I did all 4 rotors and front and rear pads on BOTH of their cars for less than $400 and some chinese lunch. I also work on mower tractors to help friends. Last summer,I fixed over 70 mowers and made decent money. I was charging 25 an hour labor donation,and was way more than busy. There was a guy a few miles from me charging $80 an hour for labor.I got suckered in by him 1 time,not knowing him or what he was up to. I did the work on his tractor and charged him,only to find out,it wasn't his tractor and he charged the people who owned it his $80 per hour rate.
Guy would have cried if he saw the '80 Mopar convertible discarded at local yard - a few years before they crushed out last fall. Was a Le Baron / Mirada / Cordoba type of rig. Probably Cordoba. Very boxy. I thought I'd be stuck with the thing forever, if had tried to acquire it for resale.
That happened to me. A customer drops off a Cutlass and wants an estimate on rear brake lines. I check out the car and find that a rear caliper is leaking. The caliper is new, so I ask the guy what he wants me to do. I told him to take it back to whoever installed the caliper or get a new caliper and pay me to install it. The car sat in my drive for three days while I waited for him to contact me. A woman then comes to my door and asks me why I have her car in my drive. As it turns out, the guy that dropped off the car was having me (and other local mechanics) do the work and he was just marking up the bill and charging the car owner. I found out that he did this to me before with other cars. The lady was pissed at the guy so she had me fix the car from that time on.
That is a fact! This car is just rotted to death underneath. The parts bill is probably worth more. I almost laughed at the fact he bought the stainless lines. Like the regular steel one wouldn't have outlasted this thing. Funny, it actually has an Ohio plate on the back. I'll take a pic of it for the resident corn cob Hey Shawn! Come get your cars outta my state! Lol.
Jason, There is no chance in hell you have 10 hours in the car... not with your description of the work.. I would double it, and your probably close. In that light, if you think your time is worth 60/hr, then go right ahead and charge $1200 bucks. But I can sit here 1500 miles away, and assure you that no way you have only 10 hours in that car.. not possible. ---------------- the following is not related directly to Jason or his question, but are my thoughts on labor charges in general This was a hard lesson that I had to learn, being in business.. everything takes a lot longer than you think it will. I just did an engine install (EFI/DIS 482 with all the required wiring/6 speed conversion/hyd clutch/EFI fuel system conversion on a 70 GS convert.. Total labor time on that car was 122 hours... we charged out a little over 90 hours.. The rest was written off as the learning curve/screwing around time. I was not pressed to estimate the job, but I was thinking might be 60 hours... Which is why I won't quote labor on most jobs.. you just don't know what your going to get into. Anyone who charges for every minute they are "working" on a car, in the situation above, is a thief as far as I am concerned. Because the reality is you get distracted, the phone rings, your listening to the radio or watching the game, or your lead off down a path that is incorrect, because you have never done the job before.. Charging the customer for your learning curve and your leisure time is simply wrong. It's the difference between working at home and working in a professional environment that is the key here. This coming from a Professional Tech with 17 years in the trade, before I started my own business.. Sure, did I beat flat rate when I worked at the independent I started out in? Back then, in that environment, working on a job that was often the first or second time I had done it, on that particular year/make vehicle... I typically could make book time, or beat it by a little. Now, when I went to the dealership.. Experience and familiarity with the product I was working on let me destroy book times... simply because I knew every tool I needed, every procedure to follow, and every trick in the book, since I had done this job (say a timing belt/water pump on a 90's Accord 4 cyl) dozens of times... It payed 3,2 hours as I recall... and everyone in the shop could do it in less than an hour.. most of us could get it done it 45 minutes.. if we had to. No distractions, no learning curve, total efficiency of motion and effort. Parts 40 ft away in the parts department.. From putting the car on the lift, to the refilling the cooling system without tapping air in it, the process was clean, quick, and efficient.. because I had done it dozens, if not hundreds of times. This is the advantage of a dealership setting.. I worked for a good independent, and we could, and did fix everything... but the difference was in the dealership, 99% of the time I could look at the car in the service drive, could look at the work order, and know exactly what was wrong with it.. that's the advantage of working on just one product line. But that is not reality in the aftermarket, nor in situations I encounter in the shop here, even though I have been working on GS's since I was old enough to see over the fenders. Too many variables when you go away from factory equipment, or from age and condition of the vehicle. I charge $75/hr here in the shop.. having moved out of the 7500 square foot industrial building that I occupied for nearly a decade, into my shop 100 feet behind my house, I shed most of my overhead, so I can make a living at that hourly rate. And when you charge typically about 60-80% of the actual time you have in a project, at that rate, anyone who thinks they are getting ripped off, needs to get a better grip on reality.. I sleep well at night, knowing I am giving folks a good job, and a good value, for their money. But I will never get rich doing this... no matter how hard I work.. but then again, I have no need to ever retire. Retire from what?.. being my own boss, working on my own schedule, and having complete control of my life?... sure I guess I will quit doing that when I die... Anyway, just some random thoughts on a Saturday morning, now I have to go fire up a race 482 on my run stand, while I wait for it to warm up enough to work on the house today.. JW
And, a new day a new fuel leak....came out this morning and it's leaking fuel in another spot. I thought I smelled gas... Im gonna have to bite the bullet here. The line is so crusty there is no place clean enough to put in a compression fitting or a flare union. Unless I just connect it together with rubber and hose clamps. Only car other than Jennifer's rustang that breaks just sitting there doing nothing
No thanks, you can keep that one Jason! We'll let it fade back into the earth in your state and not lose too much sleep.
Since we can all tell the car is gong to fall apart shortly after leaving you, I would be inclined to take it easy on the person and read them the riot act about not spending more money on the car. I think your 1200 estimate is more than fair considering the attention and efforts you have made. ALSO, I can tell you are kind of like me in that your 10 hour estimate is probably closer to 20 in reality.
Pictures of the brake lines on my 2003 Suburban after I replaced them . That job is a Pain in the A$$ . Body has to be jacked up on drivers side to do correctly . I had at least 12 hours into it laying on my back under it .
