rickhamilton620
has a fetish for terrible cars
Ah, the joys of inflation and an orphaned marque.
This is why you should learn to work on your own vehicle. If you had some tools (less than $100 for a good starting set) you probably could have fixed this by now.
Just a quick glance at Vatozone shows:
Dayco belt for your car: $18.99
Duralast Belt tensioner: $72.99
Idler pulley: $19.99
Going for a slightly better grade of part (as if you'd want to keep the car...) at O'Reilly's nets us this:
Gates belt: $20.99
Gates Tensioner: $62.99
Murray idler pulley: $23.99
And you could probably change it all in your driveway in about an hour. I recently did a field repair on a Jeep ZJ that had the idler pulley all but fall off, and we had everything changed out in 45 minutes.
Also, I don't see you negotiating the price down to $150. Shop pricing for parts (aka 'jobber rate') is only 10-15% off those retail prices and you're looking at about an hour of labor. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want some 'mechanic' who thinks his skilled labor is only worth about $40 at retail to perform an important repair on my car. Consider the problems I've had with people that reasonably ask twice that much, and you should be very, very frightened.
However, feel free to try; you might get lucky and find that someone has an empty shop and needs something to do.
Haha, yeah if only I had the foresight to find that GM would do a mass purging of brands, lol.
I've let my dad know all of this...and I'm strongly considering doing this myself. There's a video series on youtube that shows replacement of the belt, tensioner, and idler pully for my vehicle, and it doesn't seem complicated. I'd rather spend 100-175 or so myself, then pay close to 200 or 300 dollars even. I'll need to do some pondering, as well as see if I could somehow manage to pull this off given my crap work schedule. (I'd be all over doing it now, as in this evening, but i work from 4 until 9, and tomorrow, from 9 until 4)
I may order the items after work this evening, then drive out tomorrow after work and pick them up using my parents car.
Thanks again for all the advice!
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