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Dealers aren't called Stealerships for nothing. My friend had a rat chew through a fuel injector wire. Dealer quoted $8000 for a new wire harness. My friend sai
by talldatethrow 3y ago
Dealers aren't called Stealerships for nothing. My friend had a rat chew through a fuel injector wire. Dealer quoted $8000 for a new wire harness. My friend said there's no way he can pay that. They said "don't worry, file it with your insurance and it'll be covered since an outside action did it" with a smile.
My friend has a $1k deductible, and doesn't like filing claims he doesn't need to.
He and I soldered the wires back together and protected them. Took us about 30 minutes. Been 4 years since.
Why can't the dealer offer a professional version of that at $200 an hour for 1 hour? Because they'd prefer to sell 40 hours of wire harness replacement.
- krallja 3y agoThe professional version is to hire an independent mechanic to do the soldering and wire protection.
- zdragnar 3y agoDepending on the brand, the dealership likely has agreements in place to only do formally approved work, and I doubt "soldering wires together and wrapping them in electrical tape" is covered in the manufacturers tech manual. More than that, they may not have wanted to risk overlooking a different wire that may have been partially chewed through, sending the car back only to have it short out again the next day. Replacing the whole harness is "safer" (and certainly more lucrative).
- talldatethrow 3y agoI didn't wrap them in electrical tape. You're giving dealerships a lot of credit. The reason my friend called me was because I spent 10 years working at dealerships. And am a decent mechanic overall too. Luckily this didn't need much. Dealers constantly throw half measures and guesses at repairs and send them on their way only for the customer to have issues miles or days later. This is simply a revenue maximization scheme and that's it.