Originally Posted by 19psi

in those cases, the dealer would have been cheaper. they would have charged an two hours total for diag. time, as they have seen those problems many times. then you would have had .5 hour labor to r&r the mass air sensor and probably another hour for the charcoal canister.
so 3.5 hours total plus parts at the dealer.
private shops are cheaper for stuff like brakes, cv joints and other mechanicals but for electronic diag work, the dealer is usually the btter deal.

Originally Posted by Mut

My 1999 RX300's engine check light turned on recently, and I went to a shop that specializes only in Lexus vehicles. Being unfamiliar and ignorant about car maintenance and repair, I gave the go ahead to start running the tests and look for the problem even though the estimate I received for the absolute worst case scenario was $1200. Well, from all of the mumble jumble I was told, something was wrong with the EVAP and they had to look at each sensor to see if they were giving the right readings. Two codes popped up (forgot which ones).

By the way, I didn't understand much of what they were saying so my post might sound like they were being vague when I'm trying to repeat it.

Apparently, the sensor on the charcoal canister is completely dead. The only way to fix this is to replace the sensor, but the sensor isn't sold separately. The Charcoal canister will cost me $541 to replace. I saw them do the test in front of me so I guess I know it doesn't work, but I don't know if the sensor isn't sold separately.

Also, a long, long, long time ago the cabin air filter was not put back when it was in for maintenance. Some time back, a CD fell in that empty area and got shredded on the air filter. It made some weird noise so I turned the engine off and removed all the pieces. Or I thought I did but one the mechanics pulled out a small shard of the shiny disc. Could this have been an issue?

They had to drop the gas tank and the glove box for checking all of the sensors. This is what's eating up the labor cost.

Either way, one of the codes is fixable with a new charcoal canister. They told me the repair was about 90% finished. So far the bill is at $1024. That's $483 worth of labor the mentioned above. I believe I got ripped off with the labor charge since they "worked on it for 5 hours" or however long. Does it take this long? Is this even normal to cost this much?

This is my first time dealing with an auto mechanic and I understand that I didn't really do my research and go about it the best way possible, but my questions is: how badly am I getting ripped off? When I get the codes, I'll post them for a more accurate estimate. I live in Santa Barbara, CA, which is part of Central California.

P.S. As a bonus, my stupidity lead me to go to Jiffy Lube a few times, which turned out to be a huge mistake since the guy told me the car had the wrong type of oil in it.