Re: [DMCForum] A simple task

[Ryan Wright <ryanpwright@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 7/13/05, Marc Levy <malevy_nj@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> I made this discovery many years ago..  Which forced
> me to take on more jobs on my car than I would have
> otherwise.  The process too a long time, but I
> remember the exact moment I made the decision.

I, too, remember my "moment".

It was 1996. I owned an '85 Fiero GT. The "check engine" light came on
and I, being clueless, had no idea what to do about it, so I took the
car to the dealership. Got it back later that night, the response was,
"We don't know why the light came on. We reset it for you." The bill:
$75.

On the way home, the light comes on again, so I go back. Can't get me
in so I make another appointment for a few days later. Drop the car
off, pick it back up. The response: "We did some more probing and
found a bad EGR solenoid. If you want to replace that, it's $140 for
the part, and 3 hours labor." I decline to have it replaced because I
don't have the money. The bill: $80. I dispute it. I already paid them
$75 to fix the problem and they didn't fix the problem, I'm not paying
another $80. I get the usual rants and raves about having to do extra
work to locate the problem, etc. They threaten to keep my car if I
don't pay. I talk them down to $40, pay and leave. Only wish I had
known about the law that says they can't keep your car if you don't
pay your bill. I would have simply dialed 911 and brought an officer
out to retrieve my property and not paid them another dime. But I
didn't know any better.

A couple of months later, I found the truth.

1. There's no "extra probing" to find a bad EGR solenoid. You plug a
$150 scantool (I now own one) into the ECM and it tells you "code xx,
EGR solenoid failure." Further, you can jump two pins with a paperclip
and the check engine light will flash the failure code back at you, so
you don't even need the scantool. Which means the initial $75 I paid
them was for them to do jack shit. They didn't "reset the check engine
light". They didn't do a thing. "Extra probing" my ass, finding the
fault is a 30 second procedure! And this was an official Pontiac
dealership.

2. That bad EGR solenoid? $140 + 3 hours labor? Well, I bought one
from a Fiero-friendly GM dealership on the east coast, found through a
Fiero mailing list I was a member of. I paid $65 for the part (brand
new). Now, I had no idea how to replace it. The best I could do
mechanic wise was change my own oil. So when the part arrived, I
looked it over, then I opened the engine compartment and looked around
to see if I could find a matching part. I did, right there on the top
of the engine. Now, remember I'm a complete mechanical idiot at this
point. Never touched anything like this in my life. The replacement
procedure took me 5 minutes. One bolt, one electrical connection, and
one vacuum line. Done. But the professionals needed 3 hours to swap
the same part. They would have charged me $210 for that 5 minutes of
labor, plus double the price for the part.

>From that point on I vowed to do my own work whenever possible, and I have.

-Ryan

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