I was quoted $380 to replace spring seats to solve a rattle up front. Is that fair?

I typically charge one hour per side and the seats are about $35.00 each. Without align at $75.00 an hour you are looking at about $220.00 plus tax. If they are doing an alignment on it at that time it is a bit of a gouge. If they are not aligning it for the $380.00 then I would say that they are absolutely breaking it off in you rear end. Is this a dealership that is quoting you on this or an Indy shop?

Mark

its an indy shop in hermosa beach, ca, and i have felt they overcharge often. They mark up the parts considerably too, but do good work. There was absolutely no alignment, and the rattle was a fan near the a/c that was under the front skid plate. Pretty pissed. Should I go to the dealer? Do they have book prices, meaning this job = 1 hour of labor, etc?

It is possible that they charge book time but the can charge whatever they want, they can write their own book for customer pay times as well. Understand that the book is only a GUIDE, it is not the 10 Commandments of auto repair and they can really charge whatever the hell they want. It is up to you as the consumer to either authorize the repair at the quoted price or not and if you do and they do the job as agreed then you can just go ahead and pay the bill.

As far as 1 hour per side goes, I only charge that amount because it is a fair amount for the work involved and, honestly, that is what we always charged back in the day. Is that the real book time or just an arbitrary number that someone pulled out of their ass? I do not know, but I do know from years and years of experience that it is about right for the work being performed.

Mark

I just replaced the struts and spring seat in my S70 last weekend. Took me a little over 3 hours to do but it was the first time I did this. Most time consuming was using a spring compressor to remove the spring. I installed the Bilstein Heavy Duty struts and love the better handling.

Ditto the above, got the spring compressor from Autozone, no charge rental. Only reason spring compressor to a little longer is using ratchet rather than air wrench. I did struts and shocks, Bilstein HD all around plus new seats all around.. Improved ride and handling so much I wondered why I waited so long. I also replaced the swaybar with the IPD heavy duty version--they give you a discount when you do struts, shocks and swaybar as a package. A fair amount of coin, but you will have a new car in the handling category.
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96 850T, Bilstein HD, IPD swaybars