You've heard of rip off Britain - now this:

Rear discs are a bit corroded, garage rings up "Need to replace them and the pads while we're at it". Fair enough. "How much?" I ask.
"discs are £160, pads are about £70". Collapse on floor. Get up and there's more nosie from the phone "...plus one hours labour"!

Now feel free to shoot this down in flames as I'm not a mechanic, but 1 hour to remove two wheels, loosen a couple of nuts and then tighten it all back up again???

If it didn't need an MoT then I'd have a choice.

 

My rear disks have some corrosion, but my January service didn't mention them to be replaced.
They mentioned my low fronts tho.

Old GSI sailed through MOT with quite badly corroded rear disks.

Have just got new front disks for less than your rears and Ferrodo DS2500 for about 80. I am 2 POT though.

P.

 

To add insult to injury the bill came to £485.79 for an oil change service!!!

And then the final straw.

Phone call from mate to say he'd just been overtaken by my car at 90mph++ on the bypass!!!

They really are taking the psss.

 

Name and shame !!

 

When you complain about the 90mph+, I'm sure you'll get quite a bit deducted from the £485.79

Ratman,
MY98 Wagon

 

Simon, the rear brakes are also drums for the hand brake. So it is NOT just a case of un-doing a couple of bolts. But then again you said you are NOT a mechanic, so you have YOUR field of knowledge, they have theirs.

Dont complain about the cost of keeping a high power car running. What did you expect when you bought it, did you expect parts to be as cheap as for a micra? I mean they must be about the same level of power.

Dan

Ps. Sorry if this offends, but what the hell do you lot expect.

 

Dont use Subaru dealers if cars out of its warrenty, use smaller specialist garages, loads about, Scoobymania, scoobysport,TSL,GDA,NAM & TEG to name a couple.

Mark A

I dont agree with Danny Fisher 100%

 

The rear discs and pads would take in the region of about an hour to do, if there were no other problems.

You have to remove the wheels, remove the rear calipers completely frmo the hub, adjust the handbrake mechanism, remove the discs (often requires quite a bit of force, or the use of pullers), clean up handbrake shoes, and adjust as necessary, fit new discs, fit new pads into calipers, cleaning everything up, re-fit rear calipers, re-adjust handbrake mechanism, re-fit road wheels.

I saw the problems he guys had changing the rear discs on my old car, and it took them (more than one for a while), about 90 minutes to do the job. Luckily, they had only quoted me an hours work for the task, so that was all I got charged.

 

Agree with Danny and MarkS. Don't skimp on these bits. And don't skimp on any others, either. You want performance, you pay.

And Scoobs are cheap, relatively - go ask what a Porsche dealer would quote before moaning.

Good luck

Richard.

PS A mate paid £1k-plus to get his 911 back in shape after one track day

 

1 hour would be about right in my opinion. Changed front discs and pads for a guy today and it took just under an hour. They were the AP ones with all the allen keys. The rear is a little more complicated due to the handbrake.

Paul.

 

It's really not 'White mans magic' as some people seem to think.
Did the job myself in the driveway in about an hour or so. Its simply a case of wheel off, part and remove the pads, undo a disk retaining screw, remove disk. The handbrake shoes should not cause any trouble whatsoever as they should not be touching the inside of the drum with the handbrake off. You wont need any special tools; just get decent parts from a reputable supplier and have a go.

 

Simon, in future, if you are going to leave the car, and not stay to watch all the fun and games they make with it to avoid:

just write down the speedo value before leaving the car - and if the figure is more than a km or two, question them. Or if you have a digital camera, take a snap. Most times I will book the car really early in the morning and stay while all the work is being done (work has flexy time which is good for these situations ). Some places don´t like this though - if they don´t, then take your car to another place and write a nice letter to the manager stating why your buisiness is going elsewhere.

My dealer likes it when I am there. If there is something that comes up, he can ask me there and then what I would like to do. It also means you know exactly how long they really took, and know what they did/replaced. Otherwise you have no clue if it was really one hour or just ten min. Or if the "new oil" they put in was such etc etc. Almost as bad as bank managers some of them... But some are truly good.

Good luck mate.

 

A road test is part of the service, but that shouldn't mean thrashing it to within an inch of its life. Do they let it warm up properly?

 

New rear pads fitted today. Genuine Subaru . Took the guy 20.min max. I watched him .he was very good and I was happy. But Dont most garages have a minimum charge of one hour ?? For disks and pads 1.hour aint bad

[Edited by Luke - 3/8/2002 9:11:16 PM]

 

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[Edited by CELL - 3/12/2002 5:31:18 PM]