Another dyno disaster........questions...

I set out yesterday at 7:30 a.m. to get the oil changed and then head off to the dyno to have the car tuned. This is the second time. Something always goes wrong. I spent the last several weeks finishing the fuel system, new intake, bigger injectors, etc. I was pretty sure I had everything in order this time. Here's what happened:

7:45 a.m. Run out of gas. Apparently the gas gauge is off since the installation of the new fuel pump.

9:00 a.m. FINALLY get the car started. I input the 72 lb injectors in the F.A.S.T. system but with no tuning experience, it still didn't like them very much.

9:35 a.m. After stalling at every redlight from the highway to almost halfway to the shop, the starter won't turn over. I'm thinking battery is now not putting out enough volts.

10:30 a.m. Tow truck arrives to get me out of the middle of the intersection.

11:15 a.m. Arrive at the shop. We push car up on the dyno. After hooking the battery to a battery charger to boost it we find out that it's not the battery. The starter is fried (It was brand new and put on the night before along with a new Optima battery).

12:00 p.m. Owner of the shop takes me to get some racing fuel and exchange the starter.

12:00 to 1:00 p.m. the guys are at lunch.

1:00 to 2:20 p.m. the owner and I have lunch.

2:30 to 5:00 p.m. All hell breaks loose. Starter installed. Plugs are fouled. Clean driver's side plugs. Car starts. First pulls are to dial in the F.A.S.T. system in the low end. First hard pull - Oil is pouring out of the back of the engine (rear seal?) and smoking horribly(rings?). Determined to be the intake. Car doesn't make power beyond 4,100 rpm. Stop the session and make arrangements to repair AGAIN. Now it gets good.

5:30 p.m. Handed a bill for $659 (I paid $450 out of the agreed $600 the first time around with these guys. I understand the additional time wasn't their fault but no one told me I was being charged for time the car was just sitting on the dyno. If I would have known that I would have pulled it off as soon as the starter was found to be bad.). I was always under the impression that a "dyno tune" included dyno time. Anyhoo, I decide what things need to be done and decide to not do them myself. Here's the list and the quote I was given. Let me know what you think:

Labor:

Plugs 2.0 hours
Wires 3.5
Intake gskts 3.0
Leak dwn test 1.5
ARP Head bolts 1.5 (builder used same HBs from stock motor)
valve cvr gskts 2.2

TOTAL LABOR: 13.7 hours = $959

Parts:

Plugs $ 39.60
Wires 110.00
Intake gskts 26.72
Valve cvr gskts 30.00
Head bolts 145.00
8 wire heat shield 69.95

TOTAL PARTS: $421.27
TAX 33.18

GRAND TOTAL: $1461.40

Is this fair?


P.S. That is the short version. The NICE version. It was a nightmare. I'm about to give up on this car. I have just under $10,000 MORE dollars in it in the last 6 months. I don't know how much longer I can do this.

Sorry to hear of your troubles ;)

It appears that you might want to break out the KY before bending over.

Those labor estimates seem kinda high for a reputable shop, some of them might be fair if I was drinking beers and taking my time but geez 2.2 hours for valve cover gaskets :rolleyes: 3.5 hours for wires :rolleyes:

Sounds like they're making money on the parts too.

Do it yourself and order the parts from Summit, your wallet will thank me later :usa:

Marc

Originally posted by Slo-ride

GRAND TOTAL: $1461.40

Is this fair?


P.S. That is the short version. The NICE version. It was a nightmare. I'm about to give up on this car. I have just under $10,000 MORE dollars in it in the last 6 months. I don't know how much longer I can do this.


Doesn't seem fair to me, which is why I always try to do the work myself - beats being put at the mercy of a shop. Does your F.A.S.T. system have the WB O2 option? If you're in or around Houston, I can probably get it dialed in pretty well for a 12pk or two of diet coke.

Sounds like alot to me but the car was on the dyno for a while...

Anyways here are some random thoughts:

$70/hr seems a little steep for labor. I could be off but I thought the going rate was ~$50hr.

Some of their labor estimates seem "liberal" at best. 2.2hrs to change valve cover gaskets?!? That should take ~45min at the most. I can't see changing plugs and wires taking 5.5hrs either. I was thinking closer to 4 with them taking their sweet time.

Some of the parts prices are pretty inflated too. Plugs are <$2.00ea, a nice set of MSD wires is ~$75 (I think), intake gaskets are $18 from GM, and ARP head bolts are ~$50 a set.

Again I think you're getting screwed but I've always done my own work so I dont know what the going rate is for this stuff. Perhaps someone else will chime in...

13.7 labor hrs are outrage. If I were you I would not do any more business with them. They are way over charged on labor.




Bruce
93LT1 Conv w/ZF6
383ci Procharged

First off i bet your rear seal is fine. How can they say the valve cover gaskets are 2.2hrs and the intake is 3hr :confused: . That makes no sense i just painted my valv covers the other day and it took 10 min off and 10 on. $110 for plug wires(i paid 50 for MSD)!!! 145 for head bolts( i paid $68 ARP) you can buy all those parts from summit way cheaper.


Sorry to hear the problems, but i really dont think your car is as bad as you think. I would get another opinion. Are you sure that much oil is coming from intake gasket. I would check the sending unit.

A good program would not hurt.

I dunno. I can't do the plugs and wires in less than 5.5h. I'd say give them 6h. 1.5h for a leakdown test is a little high but there are 8 cylinders and some of them are hard to get to, as we know. It would take me maybe an hour. 5.2h to remove the valve covers, heads, gaskets and replace and torque the head bolts is also on the high side. Let's say 4h (2h per side). I'd also give more like 2h for the intake.

Plugs+wires 6h
Head and valve cover gaskets 4h
Intake 2h
Leakdown 1h
Total I get is 13h, 13.2 isn't very far off.

As far as labor rate, this varies from area to area and with the reputation of the shop. In this area, good shop go from $62/h on up. More $$$ does not necessarily mean better work, but the guy who charges the least does so for a reason. If your motor had been done right in the first place, wouldn't it have been worth a little more$$$?

You may be able to get parts cheaper, if so, go for it.

Charging you for the time the car sat on the dyno seems unreasonable. Unless they told you they had other work waiting and that your car had to come off or you would be charged.

Good luck.

Rich Krause

Originally posted by Slo-ride
Parts:

Plugs $ 39.60
Wires 110.00
Intake gskts 26.72
Valve cvr gskts 30.00
Head bolts 145.00
8 wire heat shield 69.95

TOTAL PARTS: $421.27
TAX 33.18



prices i found on cz28.com vendors within 10 minutes

plugs $16
wires $50
intake gskt $23
valve gskt $20
head bolts $55
heat shield $46

$210 plus shipping.

just the fact that they are chargin you $40 for plugs would piss me off, that is a huge ripoff (unless you are using some sort of fancy iridium/platinum plug)


looks like you should buy your own parts.

As far as the time to do each job, the shop is probably pulling those times out of a manual that specifies general time to do the job. When my brother was working at the Ford dealer, that's how they came up with the estimates. In one instance Ford said it should take something like 6hrs to do ball joints on an Explorer, when in reality it only took like an hour. So the mechanic and the shop get paid 6 hrs, for one hour of work. It's a racket, but it's how they all do it.

Slo-Ride,

Bring the car to my house (apartment). If you help me I wont charge you a dime. I'm in south Austin though. Anything that can't be done here we can do at my buddys house.

email me christricoast@hotmail.com

Originally posted by t-trimz28
Slo-Ride,

Bring the car to my house (apartment). If you help me I wont charge you a dime. I'm in south Austin though. Anything that can't be done here we can do at my buddys house.

email me christricoast@hotmail.com


What a guy:usa: !

Hey Slo-ride

I know the frustration. Fortunately I've had a number of board members handy to help as I too have had a lot of teething problems this year with my new set up.

I too have a FAST and I have basically NO experience tuning but so far so good. I still only have it tuned to about 2500 rpms as I'm going very slow but honestly I think you can do it 90% perfect before going to the dyno for finishing up. I assume you have the WB2 option?

One thing I have learnt after all my troubles is that until you have the hardware 100% perfect, the tuning time is a waste. I understand that sometimes it takes the tuning time to reveal the hardware problems.

That seems like a rip off by the dyno shop. If nothing else they are not showing any compassion for your problems. i had a dyno guy who had a rep as a hard ass only charge me for 1 hour even though we were there for about 2 hours and I discovered my injectors and fuel system were nopt up to snuff.

My advise is to get on your regional CZ28 board and get some help. You already have had offers. Until this year I spent a lot of money on labour lacking the confidance to do it myself. But, with the help of friends, this year I took out the motor, tranny, rear end and gas tank. I have learnt a lot and can how do most things myself - although I like the company.

Even now I am having a problem with a fan motor not working and I keep overheating if I'm not moving.

Good luck and stay in touch with that ride. It is very similar to mine.

Originally posted by rskrause
I dunno. I can't do the plugs and wires in less than 5.5h. I'd say give them 6h. 1.5h for a leakdown test is a little high but there are 8 cylinders and some of them are hard to get to, as we know. It would take me maybe an hour. 5.2h to remove the valve covers, heads, gaskets and replace and torque the head bolts is also on the high side. Let's say 4h (2h per side). I'd also give more like 2h for the intake.

Plugs+wires 6h
Head and valve cover gaskets 4h
Intake 2h
Leakdown 1h
Total I get is 13h, 13.2 isn't very far off.


I pretty much agree with most of what Rich said but don't think plugs and wires should be 6hrs. Maybe 3. I also don't agree with the fact that they are charging you seperate labor time for head gaskets, valve cover gaskets, and intake gaskets. Guess what, all of the above have to come off to replace the heads gaskets anyway. Why do you also have to pay to replace the them seperately. It's not like they are going to repalce the head gaskets, put it all back together, then tear it down to replace the intake, peut it all back together, and finally tear it down to put the valve cover gaskets on. I would think total labor should be about 7-8 hours for everything. At $65/hr, that come to $455-$520. Add in the saving from parts quoted above and you have knocked the original quoted price in half. Of course, you could probably do the work yourself and save more $$. Before you have any work done or buy any parts, I would question their diagnostic ability. Nothing in your original post indicated to me why they thought your head gaskets needed replacing. Definatley get a second opinion on that. As far as the work, heck, you already have T-trim in Austin volunteering some help and I am in the same vacinity, bring it down. We'll get it done in no time. Just a thought,

Kyle

Wow. I'm blown away by the responses and offers to help.

I went to the shop and picked up my car on Friday. After being yelled at and told "I don't want to see you or your GD car here ever again!," I took it to a more reputable shop run by someone I trust. I'm trying to get the car finished and tuned to run in Super Chevy in Ennis, TX in mid May. I can't afford to miss anymore work messing with the car so I'm going to pay someone to do it for me. I'm not that familiar with how long it takes to change head bolts, etc., so you guys have been a great deal of help in determining a "reasonable" amount of time to have the work done.

T-trim, I wish I would have read your response sooner. THAT'S an offer I don't get very often, if ever. I've already dropped the car off at B&P Racing down here. We're going to go over estimated costs, etc. today. I'll give you a shout if things don't go well.

Let me clarify a couple of things:

As far as the F.A.S.T. system goes, I do have the WBO2 option. Someone offered help with that as well. I'll take you up on that when the time comes (hopefully soon).

The head gaskets should be fine. They are copper and the heads and block are O-ringed. The problem is that the builder used the head bolts off of my original motor instead of new ARPs. I'm assuming they will stretch(or ARE stretching) under the stress of 15 lbs of boost. What do you guys think? I'm at 10:1 CR as well.
I just thought that the smart thing to do would be to replace the stock ones with ARP.

Thanks for the responses and offers! :bow:

The head bolts are torque-to-yeild, so they're one time use only. It's definately a good idea to change them.

My offer still stands. The little things that you get nickel and dimed to death for are things you could easily learn to do yourself with a little help.

Keep this in mind if thing go wrong in the future (knock on wood).


Chris

I’m not usually one to defend what just about anyone charges (I’m a total cheap bastard and try to do anything to get out of paying for stuff like this, probably one of the reasons why I come across as a “he can fix anything” person), but that really isn’t that outrageous.

He isn’t getting billed for labor more then once (ex, the labor for the head bolts is much less then that for the valve covers because that labor charge assumes that the valve covers are already off). A lot of us have to remember also that as we work on our cars we change things around to make jobs easier later, so for those of us that have moved a bunch of plumbing… 2.2 hours for valve cover gaskets sounds insane, but if someone were to put all the factory goodies back on our cars then bolted up a blower on top of that it would probably take that long.

The shop rate appears to be $70/hour, which around here would be considered pretty good. Last I checked shop rates here run around $65/hr for any old monkey to work on normal stuff (say a brake job), where here we’re dealing with aftermarket/more demanding work. I wouldn’t say that $70 or even 75/hr is out of line (although I wouldn’t pay it because of my already mentioned problem, being cheap and sorta enjoying wrenching on my cars). I know of 2 local shops that do a lot of high performance and even some custom work that charge $100/hr labor and they always seem to have at least a 3 week waiting list….

Of the parts prices, you’ve got to remember that it’s normal practice to mark up parts prices for shop work, and even in an average garage (again, no high performance work) as high as 30% isn’t unheard of. Many shops won’t even discuss you bringing your own parts, sometimes will give you BS excuses like they won’t guarantee the work or whatever, while others will be fairly straight forward and tell you flat out that the labor charge will be different since they intend to make the same profit on the work whether you or they supply the parts. All that being said, the only thing on that list that looks outrageous is the price of the plugs, but if you wanted any gimmick plug then that is probably appropriate.

Lastly, I don’t know how much actual dyno time you got billed for, but if you had the mechanic tearing around helping you get replacement parts, dealing with assorted BS… I wouldn’t be surprised if you got billed for most of a day of labor. Most shops probably would have told you something like “well, we can get you going for $XXX,” and when you said “no, I’ve got a warranty on the starter” or whatever would have pushed the car off the dyno and left you to your own devices to get around, get home…

I’m not picking on you, just pointing out that those don’t seem to be that outrageous charges and if things didn’t cost in that range probably 2/3 of the members that work on their own cars on assorted car related boards/lists would just pay someone.

I’d be interested what the quote comes out to at the second shop, especially if it’s for exactly the same work.

Good luck in getting all the little problems ironed out.

WS6 TA, I don't disagree with what you just said. I can see where you're coming from. The shop where my car is now is B&P Racing. They, however, charge $50/hr for EVERYONE that comes to their shop. It became apparent to me that where my car was is charging based on how much the owner thinks you can afford (after he takes you to lunch and drills you about your career, income potential, etc.). I was quoted THREE different amounts for dyno time during the day (noone there can remember what they told you ten minutes before) and at NO TIME did anyone say I was being charged while my car sat on the dyno with nothing being done to it. And no, there was no one waiting in line. We agreed on $600 for a dyno tune in January. After two runs on the dyno we found that the fuel system wasn't sufficient so we stopped. I said I would be back after I redid the fuel system. I paid $450 of the $600 agreed amount that day. I came back and let the manager know that I had paid $450 of the agreed upon $600 for the tune. She said "it was $750." I'm like "what!?" She finally accepted the fact that she wasn't there when the tuner and I agreed on the $600 (and who charges $750 anyway when you're using MY o2 sensor and MY software?). The only thing I took away from my experience there is that prices are subject to change AT ANY TIME. My response to that is "no thank you." I paid them over $1100 for the work that was done (changing my starter and cleaning two plugs) and tuning (four total hours of dyno tuning time on two different occasions). I can say with great relief that I will NEVER go there again.

As far as the new shop. The verbal estimate given to me is less than $1,000 which is $500 cheaper. I'll have the written estimate today. I'll post it when I receive it.

Well, let me temper what I said before with: What a ****ty way to do business.

Also, one thing that had me wondering was that the labor rates that I was posting were from the DC Metro area (and funny, Rich posted almost similar rates from around buffalo, which is the only other place I’ve ever lived in), but I was under the impression that rates were more reasonable in most other areas.

BTW, dropping that labor rate to $50/hour will drop your price by almost $400 with no changes to parts prices and estimated time…

Like I said, good luck

That really sucks! There are so many well known companies that tune in your area that it seems like the people you took your car to thought they are the only ones that have a dyno. I am putting the blower back on mine soon and I have to travel at least 6 hrs to get it dyno tuned. I'd say trailer it to the dyno next time, it just might save you a lot of money and headaches.

The leakdown test at the new shop resulted in 5 cylinders at 4-6%, 2 at 10-12%, and 1 at 25%. The one that was 25% was 90% when first tested. It seems the valve lash adjustments were everywhere and not even close. The number 7 cylinder had a valve that was stuck open during the first test. It appears that, amazingly, there are no burnt valves and that the leakage is around the rings. I can only assume that that is from running the car WAY rich so often while changing stuff and trying to tune it. I'm going to leave it the way it is and freshen it up at the end of the year. The original tuner has agreed to finish the tuning at a different shop and/or at the track. The car should be done Friday and we'll tune it next week. I'll let you know if it breaks into the 13's.......... :irk:

TTT....people need to see this for future reference

Here's the estimate as I can remember it (price is correct, parts list may not be 100% accurate due to my short term memory issues :D ):

Labor:

Leakdown test
replace plugs and wires(over the valve cover)
adjust valves
R&R head bolts
Flush radiator
Replace intake gaskets
Replace header gaskets
Replace valve cover gaskets

Parts:

Tr6 Plugs
MSD custom fit wires
ARP LT1 highest strength Head Bolts
Intake gaskets
Valve cover gaskets
Earl's killer Header Gaskets
Can of "sumpin'" to try and lower leakage points
Coolant/Antifreeze
Other stuff I can't remember

Total: $890

AND.................

Install new Torque Converter
Stage II shift kit
new tranny fluid, etc.
new poly' tranny mount

Total: $430

GRAND TOTAL: $1,320.00

That is $141.40 less than the first estimate but INCLUDES installation of a TC, shift kit, etc.

What do guys think? (Besides "you should have done it yourself").