Stock 1996 jet black Camaro Z28 convertible. Only 77K miles. Awesome car. Not a garage queen, but things break. Few days ago, ran over a curb that broke open the AC line, but didn't notice the damage. Days later, while driving in town, it began stuttering and then died in traffic. Argh! Got it started, but repeatedly died at idle. Smelled fuel. Finally, would not start at all. Got a tow to the dealer, which I don't like, but the only place open with minutes to go. They diagnosed the fuel pump, which is inside the gas tank. Said it would take $2.4K to fix the AC and replace pump and gas tank. Later, on the shop's test drive, it went a mile and died. No restart possible. They then diagnosed the ignition module as having been destroyed by oil thrown up out of a worn seal. Has been no sign of oil in my parking place. They now say it will take about $5K to fix it all. Way, way over my budget. Am I getting hosed, maybe? Or are these figures "reasonable." Just looking for general advice/feedback. As of now, the Z28 is a hostage of the Al Qaeda of Automobilia. Thanks in advance.

 

Never ever ever bring your car to the dealer. do you have a place to work on it? i'm sure others will chime in.... any pictures of damage?

get your car OUT of that dealer....

 

Thats beyond absurd lol.

Replacing the fuel pump takes a couple hours if you cut the access hole (which I think is a great mod), and a walbro 255lph style pump costs all of $100.

Get an AC line from a junkyard and recharge the system.

And a new opti shaft seal and possibly optical eye...

 

Buy a technical service manual and repair the vehicle yourself for under 1K. A great time to learn the fbody and save bucks.

 

what some other guys did.
http://www.ls1tech.com/forums/lt1-lt...placement.html

its up to you. I did the racetronix upgrade for my new motor. Its not really that hard if you have the tools.
remember measure twice, cut once.

http://www.cardomain.com/ride/696745/3

scroll almost to the bottom to read my small writeup.

 

get it out of that dealership, they are giving you bogus numbers because they don't want to do the work.

An opti, in my opinion, is super easy to change. since you have the A/C needing work, just pull the condensor and radiator (you'll want to drain it anyways for the opti), and then you can do 99% of the work from the top, makes it much easier.

 

$5000? good god, and i thought the $3100 i spent to have my trans rebuilt, u joints replaced, rear main seal replaced, oil level sensor replaced, rear pinion seal replaced, and oil pressure switch that THEY broke replaced was pricey.

 

Way overpriced. I work at a shop down here in louisiana and all we deal with is high performance cars. If you let us cut the trap door for the fuel pump, we would be done in a day with everything. And at $65 dollars an hour even if it took us ten you'd still be $4350 heavier in the wallet.

 

That's about what I would expect a dealer to charge.

If you don't have the means to fix it yourself, at least take it to a reputable non-dealer shop. Some place that charges in the vicinity of $60-75/hour, not the $120-150 that dealers charge.

You ought to be able to get all of that fixed at a good shop for under two grand, and probably under $1500.

Do it yourself and you can get under $1000, assuming you don't need to buy any tools.

 

The dealership is probably charging $125.00 an hour.. Most shops around here charge 60~80...

 

for 5K you could BUY a whole car in decent shape... yeah, yeah... I know that you won't KNOW the shape of the car, but 5K to "fix everything"... we all know that is BS too..

pitch it and buy something else.

my 2 cents.

jt

 

I would tell them to take a walk...stealerships are the biggest scam going.

Considering the ignition module is right on the front of the motor thats an easy fix. The fuel pump is going to be your biggest expense. Read this forum and do the trap door mod. I wouldn't even consider buying a key from those crooks...

Like everyone else said- Get yourself a manual, a buddy and a weekend and the proper tools and do it yourself. Not only will you learn a lot, you will have fun and sleep well knowing you saved yourself about $4500...

 

5k

 

5k = dealer does not want to touch and wants you out of their hair. If I were you, I'd either diagnose it yourself because dealers have a tendancy to throw parts at cars, or take it to a few other shops for free diagnosis and quotes if you can't do the work yourself.

 

It may not be that the dealer wants you out, but the tech that is working on it is just throwing EVERY single part at it to solve the problem cause he doesn't know how to diagnose it. I am a tech at a GM dealer and I see bad techs do this alot with customer pay jobs that they can't properly diagnose. Most of the time, these types of techs will only get warantee jobs because then they can throw every part at a car to fix a problem without upsetting the customer, and at the expense of the dealer.

Unfortunately, it's these types of techs that give dealers bad names, as a select few at every dealer actually knows how to fix a car with only the part it needs. In your case, I hightly recommend trying to figure out what is wrong yourself though with the help of this forum, shoeboxes website, and feel free to PM me with any questions. Learning to fix our cars is what actually got me into this profession ironically as a dealership misdiagnosed my car when I first got it, and I ended up putting head gaskets on my car myself as the first big mechanical thing I had ever done at 16yrs old.

Best of luck
Crazy