Originally posted by phil:
Originally posted by Jeb Hoge:
They pulled my Duratec when they did my car. It was a 4-harness job that under optimal circumstances would have taken probably 3 days, at least, on a job that's booked at 12 hours.



99M03 claims a labor allowance of only 7.7 hours of for a car like mine (2.5 V6 w/ ATX and ABS; see page 2 of 99M03), which is one of the reasons some dealers simply try to avoid doing it. I'm not sure how it works in all shops, but either the dealer or the tech generally ends up eating the costs for time above the labor allowance. See flatratetech.com for a world of discussion on topics like this.



Was it 7.7? I could have sworn I'd been told 12. Well, either way, it sucks out loud and my mechanic was a CEGer, to boot. Of course, he quit and split before the job was done, and as far as I know we've never heard from him since.

Personally, I'd tip a mechanic who took on this job a few hundred bucks out of my pocket into his as an incentive.

"Think of it, if you like, as a librarian with a G-string under the tweed." Clarkson on the Mondeo.