I'm actaully kinda curious about how long it actaully took Meineke to complete the whole job. They never called me to tell me my car was ready. I had to call them. I called them to follow up and then they told me it had finished a "few minutes ago". The estimate was 1 hour per ball joints and 45 mintues for each outer tie rod--3.5 hours total plus the alignment. Hmmm how long had my car really been sitting there before I had called?

 

Wow it shouldn't taken them that long.

My balljoint took 30-40 minutes per side at home without a lift, and that includes fighting a few stubborn bolts. When you replace the balljoint, you have to disconnect it from the tie-rod anyways. It takes no more than 1 minutes to unscrew the tie-rod out once you have separated the balljoint from the tie-rod. Installation is just the reverse.

That's unless they charge you by what the book says, and not the actual time it took them. I can probably tell you a certain job takes 4 hours and be done in 2 hours, but still keep the car for another 2 hours just so you wont try to get a 2 hour discount. I dont know if that's the shop's intent, or if it really took them that long to remove the parts, but just be aware that the job shouldn't take that long.

 

So it looks like I got shafted some. It definitely didn't take them an additional 1 and half hours to do the tie rods. I wonder if I can get a credit for a hundred bucks or so.

 

To my knowledge there have been no changes to the ball joints on the 2GS. I'm glad you decided to have them done even if it was just for peace of mind. Too many horror stories. Just do a search in these forums and you will find them. Another thing to check specially on higher mileage 2GS4's are the motor mounts. FYI.
-Will

 

My older balljoints did look slightly different than the new ones I bought. Who knows... All I know is I'm good for another few 10k miles