tarnut77

iTrader: (2)

I have read the DIY and will probably do this myself this weekend. But I did call a couple of places that I trust to do work on vehicles. I already have the parts from Sewell and both places quoted me around $275 for labor including an alignment.

From reading the DIY this seems kind of steep for the amount of time involved. Does this seem like a fair price?

If not any recomendations for shops in the Atlanta area?

GSteg

iTrader: (15)

That's a steep price. Alignment should be around $70-80. I do balljoints and tie-rod as a sidejob, yet I only charge $40 for labor (no alignment).

It shouldn't take more than 1 hour for the job.

j stuff

iTrader: (5)

my friend did it for me for free i just bought him the tool. It took him 30 minutes for both sides.

Go to a small shop that is reliable.

350TPI

I just had the ball joints,tie rod ends,caster arms and alignment done friday for $350 including tax.It has made a huge difference.The funny thing is they called me and tried to talk me out of doing it.They said that everything looked fine but i made them do it anyway.Glad i did.

cpone

275 is really high.
Most should be 100 bucks if that.
You can do it yourself its not that hard.

tarnut77

iTrader: (2)

I did it myself last weekend. It took a few hours but not that difficult. I had to stop to go buy a 19mm open end wrench for the tie rod end. I thought my set went up to 19mm but only went up to 17mm. It did tighten up the the front end and smooth it out a bit. My tie rod ends seemed fine but I changed them anyway. The old balljoints had about 1/4" of movement to them. They didnt seem too bad but that was with 71K miles so I can see them getting pretty sloppy after 90k+ miles.

GSteg

iTrader: (15)

1/4" is considered horrible! Lexus only allows a free play of 0.9mm at most.

Hectorm

[. I already have the parts from Sewell and both places quoted me around $275 for labor including an alignment.
This is very high quote. I paid $40 for the labor & $120 for both joints.
I don't think car need to be alignment... but anyway this is another 20 bucks.

El Duque

Where are you located GSteg? I'm assuming you have all the tools & such to perform the job? Send me a PM please, thanks!

tarnut77

iTrader: (2)

The passenger side Balljoint was the worst. The driver side didn't have much play at all. I am debating on replacing the caster arms now. I am not having any noticable issues but I did notice some cracks in the bushings while I was doing the ball joints.

PR FIEBRU

Do It Yourself. It is not that complicated.

raytseng

Resurrecting this old thread as I recently had this done.

Shop estimated 1hr per side, so 2hrs x shop rate.
You need to go by what your local shop hourly rates are.

Even though it "might" only take 30min for a pro if everything goes well, consider the times when there's a stuck bolt or something that takes a long time to resolve. They can't charge you more if that happens, so that's why they use the standardized "book" rate.

A lot of shops these days seem to have standardize in the internet age and directly follow the "book", BOTH for estimates and also the repair procedures themselves. The last few shops I've been to, they all use repair software such as Alldata rather then making "estimates" based on prior experience.

Therefore to get lower prices you have to either
-find a place that has the lowest shop rate
or
-doesn't use the internet for times or procedures that you trust enough that they will do the job properly but still give you a cheaper price then a shop that blindly follows the instructions.