I think the last time mine were done, about 3 years ago in FLA, i was charged ~ $350 in labor and the plugs were $64 (NGK iridiums @ $8 each) and around $80 for the MSD wires

 

Man Talk about whiners! There are a bunch of them here LOL!

 

if you can't change your own spark plugs sell your car

 

yeah ive had mechanics hear what kind of car i have and just refuse to do work on it... its your job for christ sake

as for changin the plugs ive pretty much figured out a method for each plug that works perfect. I wrote them down somewhere so i can remember but its pretty funny, it consists of different tools and various entry points.

 

 

Then you're good. Took me three hours and 9 beers. I'm sure the beer breaks didn't help.

 

jeez what kind of longtubes do you have haha

 

That's because you do it right - beer/plug/beer/plug/beer and so on

 

so what did they quote you to do the job? thats whats inportant. some shops have generic v6 car, v8 car labor times to make it easier for there writers to sell tuneups w/o having to look up labor times for every job. and if GM pay 1.8 hours to change plugs, Im not goin to do a customer pay job (anything out of warranty) for LESS then what GM tells me it should take. Im a tech at a chevy dealer. the accepted practice is customer pay jobs are multiplied by 1.5 of what GM dictates (spelling?). so 1.8 warranty hours turnes into 2.7 hours customer pay rate. so they should have quoted you 2.7 hours.

why should someone else do what you already described as hard work, for LESS then what its been studied to take to do? now that being said, headers will almost always (on a 4 gen anyways) make swapping plugs easier then stock mannifolds. and they shouldnt have a problem doin it AT THE PUBLISHED LABOR RATE. not whatever you think is a good price to pay.

and, sorry but the mechanic ISNT getting $100/hr. the shop charges you that. the mechanics prolly making 20-30% of that, depending on there experience level.


what kind of headers do you have?

chris

 

i know we all like to stay clean but for anything over prob $200 bucks..im thinking i would just do them myself.

 

If a mechanic told me he refused to work on my car because of what it was, id instantly start raging on him for being "lazy" even if I was to lazy to do it haha. You know, dont sign up for a job then refuse to do it lol.

 

well I do partially agree about that, but only to a point. you do gotta take the bad along with the good. now, I draw the line at offbrands. I work at a chevy dealership, so dont bring me no F'n dodge, or mitsubishi to work on. we dont have access to the information we'd need to diagn. that stuff. where did you take your car to anyways?

 

im a big diesel mechanic and we sometimes take in some ford POS's like the f-650 f-550 f-350 for some of our larger accounts... and man leme tell you i absolutly despise working on them things. the damn international motor are a PITA even on the big trucks. but the 6.0 in the ford... it can go to hell they didnt even make a radiator change easy.

now i work on all of my own stuff and have never paid anyone to do anything more than exhaust on my vehicles.

i was once a service manager for NTB and had a vehicle come in for something, well one of my techs said he wasnt gonna do it for the labor time the computer called for as it was gonna take longer and was very hard... I told him to be a better mechanic and learn a faster way to do it and if he still wasnt gonna do it back his truck up to the bay and take his tools home.
Needless to say he did the job. and even did it before the time called for... amazing what happens when you try.