Laughsalot785

I own a 2005 Honda Civic EX, a sedan, with 183,000 miles on it and live in Princeton, NJ. I took my car to my local Pepboys on December 9th, 2018 to troubleshoot a strange metal grinding/popping sound come from the front of my car when a.) while driving the car after the car had been parked for a few hours and b.) while accelerating or making turns. Concerned, I drove my car to Pepboys and explained the situation. The technician said the problem was most likely the tire rod ends or the ball joints, based on the symptoms I was experiencing. I waited 90 minutes or so while my car was being inspected by the Pepboys technician. Afterwards, the technician called me over and told me the car would need a bit of work and in its current condition, the car was unsafe to drive. The technician stated that the lower ball joints, tire rod ends, lower control arm, axel shaft and steering rack all needed to be replaced and would cost approximately $3000 to fix. I got a repair quote from the technician and then opted to have my car towed from Pepboys back to my house. What course of action would you take? Fix it? Get another repair quote? Buy a new car? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

GolNat

iTrader: (7)

3000 dollars!!!!! WTF. Ax shaft?

Always get a second opinion but ball joints and tie rods are easy to replace. Is the steering rack leaking? That can be pricey to fix and I would just remove the pump and go without power steering.

Call around to local shops and ask them for a price. Pep should have given you a print out.

ezone

You drove it TO pepboys, but had to TOW it back home? WTF?

Don't ask another shop for prices on the list poopboys gave you.
Go to another shop and ask them what's wrong with the car. Let them give you a fresh list. Then compare notes.

Don't go to any chain shops.
Do look for a trusted independent shop.

When asking friends and family about "who is a good mechanic" or shop, keep in mind the majority of people only ever get oil changes and brake jobs, many haven't ever needed a real hair pulling problem solved or other serious work done


The car probably isn't even worth 3000, but that has absolutely no bearing on repair estimates.
I've seen some owners dump amazing amounts of money into cars worth less.

You could buy a pile of tools, a service manual, and a jack and DIY a lot of it for less than the estimate

Slumpertcivic

Quick check on rock auto - front end kit which includes everything you listed except steering rack and axles is $220.: $200 for remand steering rack, $100 for both axles.

So for under $600 including new axle seals and fluids you have all the parts covered with at least similar quality to what pep boys is going to use. Did pep boys even include a alignment in that price?

The other $2400 is due to their al-cart labor pricing that takes no considerations for the staggered process.

IE to change the lower control arms, the axles are 99% removed in the process. To change the steering rack, taking the tie rods and endlinks off the old to put on the new would take longer than just installing all new but they still charge separately.
dont get me wrong, the amount of rust a NJ car has added into it’s freezing outside makes this a more complicated DIY but jack, jackstands, about $300 worth of tools from Harbor Freight and you could do the job for $1000 ( except the alignment )

Wankenstein

Looks like Pepboys doesn't do everything for less.

Laughsalot785

I took my car for a 2nd quote at my local Tire Barn. It turns out the only issue with the car was the outer tire rod ends. Combined with the necessary wheel alignment and labor, my total cost was $370.00. Thanks for all your help!

Sedona

I ONLY use pep for alignments and only when I know the machine is good. When I was in college they tried to claim my ignition-glitchy v6 S10 with 30k miles was a broke timing chain at $3500 bux(that was running in my driveway prior to towing over) turned out to be a distributor fail.

The most recent time they tried to tell me the brakes were shot and on rivets but stood down when I said I would do it myself. 3 months later I looked and they still had 3/8" of pad material. Rivets....

The ultimate however was a Midas where I had my escort aligned. 270k miles and 25 yrs old but still good. They tried to tell me the steering rack bushings were 'destroyed' and couldnt fully align til they were replaced. Fair nuf, I thought. They wanted $330 for labor and $220 for the 2 bushings. Rock auto was 2.50 each and 4 nuts to replace. Ordered the part to do myself and found they were perfectly fine(go fig).

Independent shop for sure, and it is a very important sign that they would be willing to give you a full explaination and show you the damages/issues BEFORE doing anything damaging. It is common to do things to damage parts when not looking. Common....

juror

Wow, that Pepboys is shameless. For comparison's sake, I just failed state inspection for a tie rod end. Figured I'd do it myself. Why not? Got the taper popped with a 3-jaw puller, then got stuck getting the tie rod end off the tie rod because of the rust. I applied as much heat as I could (not much, I have a plumbing torch) and couldn't get 'em to budge. Took the car (and the part) to my local shop, sheep-facedly explained the situation, endured a little good-natured ribbing and left them to their devices.

They charged me $50. I feel guilty every time I go there because I only take them problems I can't solve myself. I mean, some of them are surely softballs if you're a real mechanic, but it's worth a lot more than $50 of my money to get me out of a jam. And they were willing to use a part I provided. Most shops aren't (and I can't blame them).

Oh, and to be clear, my regular shop is not the one that did the inspection. They can't do them because their door isn't big enough, so I take it somewhere else convenient.