Repair Times

[d_dan]

just my personal oppinions

[TopCat]

... i need to get the car setup in westward and break her in with a few hundred miles before the trackday on the 20th...

Now admittedly you didn't specify the month, but this was written about your turbo project back in Feb! I'm not saying you don't know how long it takes to get work done, but surely you've learned at this point that the time it takes to complete a task in perfect circumstances is not a fair representation of how long it might actually take, and that unexpected complications are always possible?

Just my personal oppinions though.

[d_dan]

what would be the unexpected complications be to say... changing a window motor?

[gary d]

Getting your fingers trapped in the regulator mechanism??

[TopCat]

Or breaking one of the clips that hold on the door card. Even dropping a screw in the door skin could waste a couple of minutes, and that adds 10-20% on your optimistic time frame on an admittedly simple job.

Look, trying to bring this back on topic, yes, you could possibly complete some of these jobs yourself, but thats if you have the time, and depends on how much you value your own free time.

If you have a good reputable mechanic, I've no doubt they could replace a gearbox and clutch in under 2hours, but that is for 2 people working flat out. You won't charge on this rate though, its unrealistic to expect someone to work flat out for a full day, particularly in such a physical environment. Going back to your simple example of the window motor, little things like sourcing and ordering the part alone would take 10mins. Dealing with the customer and payment could easily take another 10. I'm not saying an hour is a fair charge for this kind of job. But giving a sprint time from you taking of the door card to putting it back on is not a fair representation of the time either.

My opinion is go to a mechanic with a good reputation first and foremost, and if in doubt there's no harm getting a second price.

[FTOny]

Thanks for the input guys. I've left the car in for these repairs because I wouldn't be too confident in changing the tappets. The gearbox needs to be reconditioned too so I wouldn't have been able to carry out this repair myself.

I enjoy working on the FTO, jobs like changing the springs, steering rack boots etc are jobs that I would happily take on myself. Given that a mechanic would have to carry out other repairs that I wouldn't take on I figured that I may as well have all work carried out at the same time.

[quote="colm_mcm"]There are 2 types of people:

A) work at the job they normally do for x amount of time, earn the money and pay someone who's qualified to do it.

B) try it themselves, often take longer doing it than it would have taken to earn the money to pay a mechanic to do it, but come away with the satisfaction of having known they did it themselves (correctly or otherwise )

Not everyone is good at or enjoys fixing cars! (I'm type B by the way)[/quote]

Colm, I'd generally be type B too but there are some jobs where I know when I'm beaten