Fellow brick owners,

I knew I needed to replace worn front and rear bushings, ball joints and front struts. I purchased the Bilstein struts (through shox.com), ScanTech bushings, ball joints, and motormounts purchased through GAPA.com. With these parts, approx $500 worth, in hand I made an appointment with my local foreign auto repair shop. After waiting a week just to get a check out they informed me that indeed I needed to replace these parts along with the motor mounts and left tierod. I told them I'd purchase the parts. I just need them installed. For labor alone the quote was for 18.6 hours at $63.60/hr for a total of $1183! Now I purchased this car for $2200 and spending this much hard earned cash makes me queasey. I've yet to inform my wife (oh boy here we go). Is this the going rate out there? I live in Spokane,WA. I have some tools, a floor jack with stands, full metric set, and a copy of Bentleys repair manuel. Now I've read the procedure and it seems straight forward. It referrs to a bunch of speciality tooling. I need a coil compressor. Any suggestions for a safe unit (those compressed coils freak me out). Hell for the amount of money I could save I could buy a hydrolic press for pressing out the bushings. Any affordable suggestions regarding pressing out these bushings. Besides for a press and a coil compressor is any other tooling required? TIA

scott