Hi Chris
It's hard to say one way or the other if you were overcharged. The shop
rate per hour where I live is pushing $100 so at least this didn't happen to
you while visiting the San Francisco Bay area!
As you know, any shop including a Chrysler product dealer's can either
price a job on the basis of the time the mechanic actually spent or charge
you the flat rate manual's time. I've never found a shop that tells me this
when I come to pay the bill and you don't see the time clock punching IN and
OUT that the mechanic actually did to track the time he spent on your turck.
I guess this is at the discretion of the policy by which the shop is run.
If they had to remove the complete suspension on both your front wheels
to replace the upper and lower ball jts (what about the tierod ends on both
sides??) which of course would also require a full front end alignment when
completed maybe a guy could spend 5hrs doing that.......I don't know??? You
have a few bucks tied up in parts here too since Dakotas after they
eliminated servicable ball jts (they became factory sealed) involve
replacement of the complete support arms upper and lower if the ball jt is
worn.
I still feel that leaving a zerk fitting on the 4 ball jts and the 2
tierod ends could have given all of us Dakota owners a good many more trouble
free miles on our front suspension parts
Paul Sahlin
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Feb 06 2004 - 11:47:25 EST