Very true. He’s got one tech in particular that works 60hrs a week to flag 30… On the flip side his star tech can flag over 100 and only wrench for half that. There’s definitely a sliding scale for makes and sometimes folks forget that affording to buy the car isn’t the same as affording to maintain it. Oil change on my truck is $40 parts. Oil change on a big rig is more like $400 parts. If you’re getting into specialty makes like Lambo/Audi those techs have extra certs. My buddy couldn’t even apply to start being a Lambo tech until he had at least 5 years on small blocks to back it up. Training was a full on overseas trip.
As compared to nearly anything, really – that’s pretty much the point. I was going with “as compared to what dealers typically have wanted to charge in my experience, as stated by about a factor of two,” but it could equally be “as compared to how much it would cost me from scratch to buy a new compressor, a new blaster, a vacuum adapter for my particular engine and a half dozen others plus enough walnut media to choke a horse.” Which I figure at about $1500 or so, using a perfectly serviceable brand new HF blaster and the adapters from a very reputable aftermarket vendor (and a decent small single-purpose compressor of course, which is the bulk of it).
Then again, I just did some Googling, and it seems like a number of Audi owners actually take their cars to BMW for the walnut blasting, because they actually do charge less than Audi indies let alone Audi dealers. Considering that neither mark is known for their budget-friendly dealer pricing, that’s pretty hilarious. So, same work, same engine, different set of techs, same result (they post photos), half the price. I’ll go with as compared to that.
(And yes, I consider BMW’s price highway robbery too – because I can do the job with bought parts for about the same price as one run of blasting from them, and that’s even valuing my time at shop rate – which is even higher than my business hourly rate, and that ain’t nothin’. That just makes the Audi rate all the more ludicrous.)
Dealership repairs and “do it yourself” are two completely different situations.
I don’t work at a dealer (haven’t in a long long time) trying to compare the costs of car work done at home to those of an established garage is not a reasonable comparison. It never has been.
Labor rates around DFW for authorized dealerships is about $140 per hour (mechanical work) so it can add up quick on a 10 or 15 hour repair task.
Mmm, and that’s why I love DIY. Even if I have to buy tools or SSTs, I still come out ahead and have the fond (or not so fond) memory of doing the job. Couple that with the two times I’ve taken vehicles in and had them hosed up by the mechanic (in one case, new intake valves and camshaft after they replaced the timing chain tensioner… guess what happened on that one), and I’m more than willing to spend my own time fixing cars.
Which is why I used, as one of my many comparisons, other dealers. (Including, apparently per Audi/VW forums, the entire family of BMW dealers.)
They (BMW dealers) charge $150-$175/h around here (my regular stealership charges $169, for example, which is why I go to them for nearly nothing), so one could safely surmise that their factor-of-3 difference in pricing is because they’re not willing to claim that a walnut blast should take any human being 15 hours…
I also reflected on the cost compared to one doing it oneself – valuing that time spent at shop rate, by the way, and buying every bit of hardware from scratch just to do it once – just to highlight the original point: that $2800 is ridiculous no matter what angle you look at it from. (Outside of the “they’re driving an Audi S6, they can afford to pay this much” angle – which, of course, will inevitably be the governing consideration for some folks out there no matter what, including apparently at least one Audi dealership in town.)