...and yes, I know it sounds dirty.

Anywho, I just got off the phone with my mom. She told me she brought her MDX into Acura this morning because it stalls and misfires when she drives it. Apparently, they're changing her "valves" for $500, which sounds like a ton of BS to me...

And then, because her car is at 91k, they told her she needed the timing belt replaced ASAP, which she knows I was planning to do for her one of these weekends I'm free. They quoted her $850 for timing and accessory belts. I told her to tell them to shove it up their a**.

I really wished she would've called me before bringing it in and paying for something that doesn't really make sense to fix.

 

I have an answer for you:
M add one letter
D add 15 letters
X keep the same

anywho, misfiring due to valves? this doesnt make any sense. I dislike dealerships, they can do good work, but sometimes are full of it, and always charge far too much. $850 for a timing belt? belt is less than $100, water pump you can get for like $60 from napa, then $700 in labor.

 

Yeah my moms 07 IS 250 shut off on the highway like at around 70mph,she had to get a tow to the dealership,and they wanted to charge her $1000bucks because of "faulty wiring" and mishandling,now my mom has a heavy foot,but she is no speed racer.. so we had this thing taken all the way to cooperate offices and they ended up paid for everything.

 

lol.. well im going to take a look at the service invoice next time i'm over there to see what they actually replaced...

My mom carts around 3 kids in this car... she doesn't drive fast anymore... and I do all the routine maintenance on it... so I'm having a hard time believing valves are the issue. Unless of course the timing belts slipped a few notches too far and they made contact with the pistons... but I have a hard time believing that too.

 

I'm gonna call her here in a bit and get an update.

 

The only technical terms she could spit out when I talked to her were "valves", "misfiring", and "check engine light" lol.

So maybe.... they're replacing a different valves in the fuel system of something... I dunno. When I see the invoice I'll decide if I'm going to flip a s*** on the dealer or not.

 

Well they screwed her alright...

It was a valve adjustment, not new valves.

They replaced her valve cover gaskets and spark plug seals, plus the labor for the valve adjustment all for the low price of $697 OTD.

Something I could have done for free if she would've called me first... oh well.

 

Yup, definitely screwed. Kinda like the $80 air filter mine once got from the dealer for a 94 Jeep GC. I think it was 14 bucks in the store.

 

yeah i hate dealers, just for giggles i asked how much they wanted to fix my tranny grind, said like $1500 or something, could get three new trannys for that much.

 

I have worked in both garages and dealerships would and never consider taking a vehicle to a garage. The dealerships I worked did a good job of keeping the hours billed to a minimum with most overlap subtracted away. Garages many times charge well beyond what the dealership did and not with OEM parts either. They base many charges on how long it takes them and with lack of knowledge it can be costly. Dealerships times come directly out of the flat rate book and get chopped down over time. If the car company finds out the two hour job is taking mechanics 14 minutes (they use time units based on a hundred units per hour when I worked for them) they will adjust the time paid to the mechanic and charged to the customer.

Many times there are overlaps with multiple jobs, but dealerships came up with a service menu system that is costly. This many miles you get all of these items. These are quite costly and you would have to know a lot about cars to just pick out the services that are necessary. One of the strange ones is taking off the brake pads and replacing the grease that the pads ride on. I think dealership now charge close to a hundred an hour and the MDX is a V6 so it would run some money for a valve adjustment, but most likely the vehicle got a major tune up which comes out of the menu I mentioned. The MDX did have an idle problem from the EGR port clogging. With rebuilt items like a trans or cylinder head a Dealership can be very costly as they will just order a new bare head and valves, not fix your old one. It is a lot less risky on their part to do repairs in this way. The Honda Dealer I worked at stocked most of the flywheels as they were never cut them during a clutch job, just replaced. I was use to you send it out to the machine shop after working in a garage. I would much rather get a rebuilt trans with Honda parts than some aftermarket parts with quality unknown. On my vehicles I like to find the company that Honda uses as OEM. I just got my timing belt tensioners off line for a good price. Honda used Koyo on my 1995 Accord which I was able to get the same part number as the original for the inner one.