Quote:
Originally Posted by thebmw
Bringing this thread back as there have been some inquiries about proper labor prices. In the last year, labor prices seem to be all over the place.
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I DIY everything, but even if I didn't I don't find hourly rates to be a very useful data point. There appears to be no genuine relationship between that and what a job actually costs that a mere mortal can figure out. When I got my N20 X3 software updated recently under a recall, they told me I needed a belt and the oil filter housing gasket was leaking. They gave me a quote of a little over $1,000, of which a little over $200 was for the belt. Neither job is hard, but an N20 belt may actually be the easiest belt swap in the history of cars. Seriously. If you timed me and it went perfectly I might be able to do it in under a minute. Any trained tech would easily do it in under 5 minutes. So what is that hourly rate? $1,000 per hour? A tech probably can do the gasket job on that engine in an hour or two at most. It only took me a little over 2, and I had never done it before and was slow about cleaning everything. So that's another $300 - $500 an hour effective labor rate.