Automotive repair costs on modern vehicles. Any horror stories?
A friend of mine in Britain recently had to replace a headlight on her Honda. It was hit by a rock and there was no choice but to replace it. Her description of the headlight was "an LED Matrix" unit, and since I don't keep up with terminology in modern cars, this was something new to me. The cost of the light was £729.99 and to make matters worse, it had to be aligned and linked to the computer in the car, which could only be done at the Honda dealership. Their labor charge was £350. That comes to over $1400 US dollars to replace a damn headlight.
I want nothing to do with modern vehicles. I own an old Toyota Tacoma, and I can replace any part on it by myself. Shoot, if you've got 10 and 12mm wrenches, you can virtually disassemble the truck.
For those who like to tinker with their cars, I suspect there is a cut-off point in time, where it is no longer easily done, and it may be ten years past by now.
Anyone have any stories about absurd costs with their vehicles these days?
Maybe a couple? I'm also a home mechanic. My van just turned 245k miles old and I'm pretty sure my 3-year old alternator is quitting on me, but I haven't had a minute to diagnose it, as I'm finishing-up putting back together the engine on my project car; just finished getting the intake on today, in fact.
That said, my sister-in-law just had her headlight replaced in her 2013 Ford Fusion, which cost her about $2000. She was in a fender bender at some point, the headlight cracked and since then had been getting more and more full of water. She actually asked me if I wanted to do the work, but I told her I just wouldn't because:
I hate working on her car (Ford's in general)
I knew what was involved in replacing that headlight.
She didn't believe me at first that basically the entire frontend needed to be disassembled. Car put in the air so the tires can be removed, so you can remove the bumper and so on. Eventually she watched a YouTube video and discovered why I wasn't interested in doing the work. She was absolutely floored that it took so much just to change the headlight assembly. She ended-up putting the work off for a couple of years here before finally relenting and taking it in.
My van on the other hand, has had a few run-ins with mechanics other than myself. A couple of years ago, I took it in to a local mechanic to do the brake master cylinder, as it was a job I just wasn't interested in tackling myself. They drove it around to test it out and came back to me, telling me it needed all new control arms and steering components due to a loud noise it had been making, well I knew this loud noise and had been chasing it down myself, having replaced the control arms and steering components. I told them as much and their response was, "Uhhh...let me call you back."
Anyway, I did end-up figuring out that loud noise. Well, not me, but my non-mechanically, but vertically challenged wife did. See, I'm 6'2" and she's about 5'4" and the loud noise was coming from a passenger side strut that had failed pretty dramatically. The top of the strut, where it sticks out of the mounting nut, had wallowed itself out and the strut was kind of just moving freely in the rest of the housing. Every time we went over a bump, the shaft of the strut would come-up and bang loudly against the wiper cowl. Problem is, the strut is tucked underneath that cowl and me being relatively tall could never spot that any time I opened the hood and for some reason, just never looked there. But bringing the van back from the above mechanic, I popped the hood to check out the work on the brake booster and my short wife points to the strut and says, "That one doesn't look like the one on the other side." So I'm confused, so I bend myself in half to see under the cowl and yup, there's the broken strut sticking out of the top of the strut mount.
Another story: Recently, I was prepping the van for a road trip that happened in September. I decided I finally needed to tackle the rear drum brakes. So I got the van up in the air and removed the tire and the drum and took a look at things. Sitting there, contemplating my life choices, I decided, "Maybe I actually don't feel like doing this job." So I thought, well I'll call Brakes Plus and see what they'd charge to knock this out for me real quick. After talking on the phone with them for a bit, they priced it out, new springs, new shoes, new drums, new wheel cylinders, the works. The guy on the phone is like, "I can give you a little discount and then that'll come to $961." I said, "Oh...uh, no thanks. I appreciate your time." and hung-up. I ended-up doing the entire job for less than $300 over a couple days, time permitting.
I honestly don't know what I'm going to do when they stop selling parts for any of my cars. My newest is a 2013 Honda Fit and I thankfully haven't had to do a ton of work on it, but eventually that too will no longer have parts availability. My main project car (the one with the engine rebuild going on) is a 1998 Jeep Grand Cherokee and those are still all over the road and yet I've struggled to find parts for it, especially as it comes to little things, such as a rubber grommet that goes between the crank position sensor and the bellhousing on the transmission. Someday I'd love to have a new Wrangler, just because they're capable vehicles, easy to work on and so on, but they're often subject to a lot of the same maladies that other new cars are with expensive parts, specialized tools and issues with their engines (cams) that are expensive or difficult to fix due to complexity.
Wow. Hard to believe a professional shop would miss a broken strut. At least you found it.
And $2000 to replace a headlight. Ouch. That's just bad engineering.
Finding parts for my 2004 Tacoma hasn't been an issue so far. RockAuto has been a good source, the few times I've had to do repairs. That little truck is darn near indestructible. The door handles, of all things, are weak points, and lots of Taco owners complain about them. I finally found some metal ones to replace the flimsy plastic ones, and that seems to have fixed that problem.
I’ve caved after decades of old cars. The family is happy, I’ve got some more time to do other stuff. But I know I’m getting rid of this car before simple things will break. The car has been good to me so far.
Besides the idiocracy of needing a whole headlight unit replaced for the most basic things, do realize there is an insane markup on those parts. Shops will sell you OEM compatible parts for OEM dealer prices. I’ve had a headlight unit replaced with a $90 part, only for my insurance to be billed a cool $600. Labor was a separate item on that bill.
As a home mechanic, I often feel the whole car industry is just filled with scammers. From manufacturers to dealers, mechanics to insurers. I rarely feel I’m not being ripped off.
A few years back my work had a Mercedes Sprinter which started dropping into limp mode due to some (presumably emissions related) issue. It was taken to the mechanics a couple of times and they'd replace bits they claimed could be the issue, then after a day or two of driving it'd drop back into limp mode. After a few goes at this the mechanics said the DPF was now ruined and it'd be $3k for the part, a bit more to fit it, and then they could try and figure out what caused that to happen. At that point the company looked at the depreciated value of the van (approaching 10 years old) and decided that putting in that much money for no guaranteed result was no longer worth it - the van went to auction instead taking whatever problem it had with it. Pity really as the Sprinters are pretty nice to drive for something their size.