Australian dealers - is it any wonder we buy offshore?

[LewisM]

My VW Passat hit 500,000K the other day - it's had nary an issue in all those km and years. Well, to celebrate this milestone, a T-junction and a Y junction of the coolant / radiator system decided to fail (just below the reservoir).

11 years out of plastique is remarkable, but I still wish they made em out of brass...anyway, after MacGyvering up a field repair out of 5 min epoxy, ball point pen bodies and electrickem's tape I drove the 80km home no problem, and began my search for replacement parts to get her un-jerry rigged.

Off to local VW Stealer. Nope, can't buy the T joint or the Y joint seperately. Need to buy entire plumbing. $275... I politely declined after exclaiming a fire truck had driven past the dealership...

Off to Supercheap, and bought an $11 brass (YAY!) T-junction. Seeing the Y is a 1" pipe with a 6mm off-shoot, I cut some brass tube, drilled/ground an elipse into it, and brazed on a 6mm offshoot. Done. Dusted. Princely some of $20 for the bits, and about an hour of work (plus some foul language after getting hot flux drip on my hand).

Went onto eBay. Found a European car shop selling exact OEM Y joint and T joints for $3.95 US each. Bought 'em just in case. (So, why can they get the joiners/splitters seperately, and we cannot????).

So far, my fabricobbling has lasted an additional 200 km with no issues... here's t at least 12000 :rofl:

[leon]

And it is only going to get worse, the days of repairing, pulling down engines and chucking in a set of rings and bearing are gone.
these days if your car engine blows a head gasket they put in a new motor.

Leon

[glend]

Not wrong Leon. Manufacturers do not build engines with rebuild in mind anymore, they want you to buy a whole new car. Mercedes engines are a great example, the head assemblies are only available as entire units, because they use adhesives to secure them, and the blocks are too thin to rebore or in the case of diesels they no longer use wet liners to save money on production cost by building out rebuild options.
My 2007 Jeep Cherokee has a wonderful, fully rebuildable VM CRD engine and i am keeping it forever. Buy smart.

[Larryp]

My wife has a VERY expensive automatic swiss watch, which required cleaning. Instead of cleaning it, they just replace the entire movement!

[leon]

A throw away society unfortunately, :sadeyes: I remember fondly working on cars, we could get a gearbox out of a car in about 40 minutes, put in a new clutch and pressure plate and drive away that afternoon. ;)

And lying under the thing putting in bearings while my brother would shove the piston down the cylinder :lol:

Leon :thumbsup:

[el_draco]

Yep, wife just had a 90,000km service done on her Hyundi. $1800 with no change. Almost worth chuckin out the car to get another! You can be damn sure the parts were about $200 and the labour charge was $400 per hour. I opened the bonnet, once, and closed it wondering where the real engine was....:shrug:

[raymo]

What the h--- did you get done for $1800? Even major services on most
common vehicles cost less than half that; I imagine that there must have
been some replacements needed other than oil, filters,etc: A standard
service on my Corolla is $190 and a major one around $350.
raymo

[glend]

That is not an unusual charge for a major job like a timing belt replacement, and that interval km mark is about right for that. I did my own timing belt replacement on the Jeep and spent only $300 on parts, ordered online from europe, verses $1700 the local dealer wanted to do the job. You do need some experience to do a job like that but those jobs are usually written up in online forums, complete with photos.

[doppler]

We picked up a very clean Nissan 300 zx for a spare parts price because the engine was running really rough and the guy had been quoted $2500 to fix a problem with the electronics. My cheap ebay Nissan scan tool gave me an error code for a knock sensor fault. It costs a lot to replace the sensor because its located under the intake manifold (v6). The google solution was to fit a 50c resistor from Jaycar to by pass the sensor circuit for a quick fix (this worked a treat). And a more permanent fix was to relocate a new sensor above the intake manifold, cost for sensor and wiring loom $100 (of ebay)

[OICURMT]

I've got a 1958 Omega Rose Gold Seamaster... not many left after more than half a century.

Had a local watchmaker (not dealer) clean the thing and replace a broken spindle... he was like a kid in a candy shop when I showed it to him... as he had to take it all apart to clean it, which for him, was "an honor to work on such a piece".

He stated the same thing, for most watches, it's more cost effective to just replace the insides, but in my case, they were few of a kind, so it has to be completely taken apart to service.

OIC!

[PCH]

"Half a decade..."

I'm guessing you mean half a century. But presumably the repair guy still wants paying for his time regardless of how much fun it was to work on this heirloom. Yes?

[raymo]

The cost of changing a timing belt can vary hugely from one vehicle to another, and I can only say that there must be an awful lot of work
involved in changing one on a Jeep, or the dealer was charging like a wounded bull, because my daughter's Holden [Opel] Astra timing belt
cost $395 all up about 18 months ago, and that's a fiddly job. Luckily my Corolla doesn't have one, so that's one less thing to worry about.
raymo

[VPAstro]

Major service on my Mitsubishi pajero, timing belt, plugs, leads, water pump and fluids was quoted by Mitsubishi at $2400, and a further $6500 to do the valve stem seals. Needles to say, it still blows a puff of smoke after idling for a while...lol. I ended up buying the parts my self, about $450 all up, and a local mechanic did the service for about $400.
I am almost due for he next major again, and will do the same thing.
Andrew

[The_bluester]

Two stories similar to stuff above. Recently the front of my car got whacked by a sheet of reo falling off a concreters truck. I expected to see most of the front bashed up when I got out but it put a couple of minor scratches on things and broke a plastic trim (Which runs the full width of the front of the car)

$360 new from Nissan Aus at mates rates because I know the spare parts guy at a dealership. $150 new from a US dealer on Ebay including semi exorbitant freight cost.

I just missed it but a women we knew years ago was offered $500 trade in for a then about ten year old Pug 405 MI16 (At the time it was sole quite an expensive car and pretty nicely kitted out) or thousands to replace the steering rack, one of those "None in the country love, we will have to import it" spiels. I was happy to take a risk and double the trade in offer but suggested somewhere else she should try, where they replaced the $0.50 O ring that was leaking. That was 15 years ago and she is still driving it now.

[Slawomir]

About 8 years ago bought a second hand Nissan X-Trail from Nissan dealer in the NT. After a few weeks I noticed a not too noisy but annoying rattling noise when the engine was running and still cold. Went to the same dealer confident that this will be fixed within the warranty...my jaw dropped when the dealer told me it will cost me $4500 to make the repair - and of course it is not cover by the warranty as apparently it was an impact damage - not done by me for sure!

I went to my my usual mechanic and he fixed it for...free. It was a loose bracket holding exhaust pipe...

[OICURMT]

ha ha ha... yep... i iz guut @ matths... icans add and subtrac gut!

Original post corrected.

Yes, I paid the guy to fix and service the watch, very reasonable price considering we are in Australia... $99 service, $45 gold spindle (original from Omega)... surprised me that it was that cheap.

[Pharian]

This should be illegal. Planned obsolescence is pure evil.