DryRider said:
I took my S 10 into the shop last week I ask them for a valve check coolant flush oil change air filter change and spark plug change they called today and said they had 18 hours in this work alone? They said they had to drop the motor from its engine mounts in front to perform the service. I was very surprised. I also asked for brake fluid and clutch fuild...check the steering head bearing and the pivot arm bushing. They said that would be about 12 more hours if they needed to pull the triple tree to get at it? Can you help me understand how much this should cost? Remember I’m at a dealership and I can’t do this work myself.
I replied already, but I don't think I'd digested the OP when I did.
I'm in the "wow, that's way out of line!" camp.
Valve check: there's a lot of parts to remove to get to the valves, but for a competent mechanic something like a few hours makes sense.
Adjustment needed: that means pulling camshafts, which adds time, plus the figuring and calculating. Something like another 2 or 3 hours makes sense.
Neither of these jobs needs the engine dropped - altho IME, pivoting the engine down may make the job go a lot easier (less fiddling around in restricted space). Obviously this is a choice, and if it takes more time to make the job easier to do, that time shouldn't be billed to you. If they have to do valve work, pulling the head is required, and I think that requires at least rotating the engine down to get clearance.
Coolant flush: crack a bolt on the water pump, drain and refill. !5 minutes, maybe? You need to pull the plastics on the left side of the bike. Again, if you've done it a bunch of times, 5 minutes. If you have to fiddle around with the manual searching for hidden bayonet pins, I could see that taking another 15 minutes.
Oil change: 10 minutes. Crack two bolts on the bottom of the engine, fill easily accessible on the right side of the bike. Filter easily accessible on the front of the bike.
Air filter: you have to pull the tank and the airbox cover. I'd say a 30 minutes - but this stuff has to come off to do the valve check, so doing them together makes this job take an extra 5 minutes (to swap in the new filter).
Spark plugs: these are buried deep in the head. I'm not sure you could get to them without removing all the stuff you need to remove for the valve check (tank, airbox, throttle bodies). A biggie is that you don't need to remove the actual valve cover, which is a fiddle business that involves removing ABS line plumbing stays. However long a valve check takes, this would take maybe 20 minutes less. Having said that, again, if everything is all apart to do the valve check, changing plugs only adds 15 minutes or so (gapping new plugs and threading them in).
Changing hydraulic fluids should be an hour or less.
Swing arm pivot: pull the back wheel, the final drive, probably a few covers/ guards, kickstand, kickstand switch, stuff like that. I did it but I don't remember exactly. Point: more involved than cracking the pivot arm bolt, several torque specs to look up and set. It's one of those jobs that seems like it should take 45 minutes but and hour and half later you're still on it wondering why it's taking so long.
Steering head I've never done, but I assume it means pulling the front wheel, brake calipers, forks, and bars. Probably more than just an hour. Everything that gets taken apart also has to get put back together: parts cleaning, thread locker or lubricants, torque settings. IME, THAT is all the time you don't account for.
As others have said, I agree that they should have some "book time" guidelines and the hours they are charging seem to be at least a sum of all the individual times -as in, they're charging the full hours to change plugs, even tho most of that time is already paid for via the valve check. So, for example: air filter, valve check, plugs, they're charging you three times to remove the tank.