Fair deal? $300 to fix oil leak?

[DubSteve]

Honestly it would take a mechanic roughly 1 hour to do the whole process.

Jack car up
undo sump plug, empty out engine oil
undo sump
change gasket
change oil filter
refill oil
off you go

Oil roughly $60, gasket roughly $30, Oil filter roughly $30 + an hours worth of labour at say $75 = ~$185

[brad]

I wouldn't be calling places like ultratune middle of the road, they're down there with kmart and repco!

Ultratune can be hit & miss. They are a franchise & hopefully the owner is onsite to keep an eye on his mechanics & ensure quality control. I have no idea what the pay scales are but if you pay peanuts.....

k-Mart: I worked for them for a total of 4 weeks way back in 1985 or '86. You were paid & treated the same as a shop assistant. The mechanics at the Sylavania store I was at were shockers & didn't like being shown how to change front struts without opening the hydraulics. I started there because i was desperate & left for a 35% increase in pay & a free hand in how I did my work (seriously, the dudes at K-Mart wanted to tell me how to fix brakes & suspension & I'd been service manager of a brake specialist for 2 years beforehand).

k-mart might be a bit better now. The national manager of KTAS is(was?) a guy called John Sink. He was my boss for 4 years at Goodyear (hence the Goodyear/Dunlop KTAS tie-up) and last time I saw him (years back) he was telling me that k-mart mechs were now on a decent wage & got a lot of training. I can't quite see it myself as when you get to a certain level of expertise you realise you can get paid lots more doing other stuff with your skills or have a lot more interesting (and appreciated) job for the same money working on one of the prestige marques like BMW (where i went before starting on aircraft) or Mercedes or a specialist independant doing tuning, etc.

One of the main requirements of working at K-Mart when i was there was the ability to talk to women & explain what the problem with the car was without dribbling on their cleavage. 90% of the customers were women.

repco - I have no idea.

The new NRMA places are marketed well - not sure what they are like though.

[brad]

Honestly it would take a mechanic roughly 1 hour to do the whole process.

Jack car up
undo sump plug, empty out engine oil
undo sump
change gasket
change oil filter
refill oil
off you go

Oil roughly $60, gasket roughly $30, Oil filter roughly $30 + an hours worth of labour at say $75 = ~$185

You've done the job or had a look under an Apollo/Camry? 95 model is the pig-ugly wide-body model isn't it?
IIRC there's an undertray, a cross member & the flex pipe is in the way too. If it's straight forward then it would probably take me 3-4 hours but I'm slow & thorough & don't like comebacks. Seriously - it would take me 45 minutes to clean all the mating surfaces.

i'm thinking there might be more than meets the eye - maybe an engine mount involved.

It's only a run of the mill toyota - were'd all these oil leaks come from FFS?

[ryana89]

it would take me 45 minutes to clean all the mating surfaces.

Its good to know there are still people like you out there, willing to do a proper job regardless of time.

[Spyda]

Dunno about the camry but i can do a 8v sump in about 30min, that includes cleaning the surfaces if the previous sump had used gasket maker goo instead of a proper gasket and if i have a powered wrench.

I guess if there was stuff in the way then it might take a bit longer but it shouldnt take more than an hr or so man.

[Mrk_Mickey]

I reckon an hour or so is debateable... I've done mine before and it took me about 3, on and off. I took about 30 minutes to clean up the surfaces properly and unfortunately I had to manually undo and redo the bolts. Changing the gasket was the easy part hahah....

[DubSteve]

Took me about 1 hour to do the mk1 when I had it, and that was sump gasket and all.

[brad]

Took me about 1 hour to do the mk1 when I had it, and that was sump gasket and all.

VW!=Toyota when it comes to mechanical philosophy/design
When i had the Mk3.5 Cabrio I was suprised at how many things were relatively easy to fix compared to other cars.

toyotas are 1) easy to service. 2) Generally reliable. 3) Often a bit of a pain to do repair work to unless you have some of the Special Service Tools.

Maybe the guy at K-Mart just doesn't want to do the job & has quoted high to put her off. I had a roof cleaner do that to me last week $2200k to water blast the lichen off my roof & spray the tiles with bleach afterwards.

[hoontime2]

NOw my mum took it in the second time to get a proper description of the problem, they said it was leaking and 8,9 hours work. $1400.
the top gasket and bottom needs sealing and on the corner there's a hole.

[Maverick]

NOw my mum took it in the second time to get a proper description of the problem, they said it was leaking and 8,9 hours work. $1400.
the top gasket and bottom needs sealing and on the corner there's a hole.

Take it in to somewhere they know what they're doing! There should be a decent specialist around your area and get a quote from a dealer as well.