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Dealer wanted $4000 for a new hybrid battery to my Camry. I fixed it for

31 points by ptaipale 12y ago

ehvatum 12y ago
Very nice. Perhaps this info will reach the stealerships, allowing them to clean high voltage battery contacts when that is all that's needed, rather than replacing the entire... bwahahahahahahahaha
- Terretta 12y ago
  They'll clean it up this way, but still charge for the replacement. Profit!
  - rgarrett88 12y ago
    That would be illegal. What they will do though is offer you a discounted refurbished battery from the last car that came in for $3,000 and take yours. Then the cycle repeats.
funkwyrm 12y ago
Wild to see imgur becoming a blog platform.
- wodenokoto 12y ago
  Having the imgur URL will really blow up your karma on reddit. People there consider imgur to be fast and reliable in delivering pictures, and posts imgur are expected to be focused on images with perhaps short explanatory texts. Most blogs are focused on text with some images.
A_COMPUTER 12y ago
Can I assume they knew they could check this and just figured they could take him for a ride? Or are dealerships really that hands-off?
- ptaipale 12y ago
  I would think that they don't care, because they don't need to. Such a small proportion of their clients has enough understanding to clean up connectors to batteries, that there is no expectation of having this kind of competence.
- RickS 12y ago
  Dealerships are that hands off. In the same way that many smaller electronics could be fixed with a $0.15 capacitor swap, but the guy behind the counter at radioshack has no idea about the inner workings at such a fine level. The company can't afford to hire, train, and retain employees with such a high baseline level of competence. Proprietary parts like this prevent the kind of general knowledge that previously made mechanics more useful. Nowadays a code tells them what's broken, a piece of software tells them what part that is, and at what level to repair/replace it. I had a similar experience when my Accord's speedometer broke. The dealership considers the entire dash cluster a single unit for manufacturing purposes, and wanted $700 for the bulk part. The guy behind the counter showed me the software and explained the process when I asked about why it was such an arbitrarily rigid decision. $20 on craigslist and an hour with a screwdriver, I replaced the individual component with a salvage part.
  - A_COMPUTER 12y ago
    The only reason I didn't immediately go to basically what you have said is, it appeared it wasn't too difficult to remove the battery and clean the contacts. You'd think this could be a troubleshooting step. Oftentimes systems are like this because they aren't serviceable at all, which I understand. Dashboards are funny, I've run into the same thing and they really are awful to remove and work on.
    - kw71 12y ago
      My first guess is that, for customer liability (incorrect field repair could feasibly cause fire; the uncontrolled nature of field repairs may have affects on reliability later) and employee safety (careless tech could burn himself on battery) the carmaker does not want anyone except the assembly manufacturer or a special purpose facility to do this kind of work on the battery assembly. So there could be additional motives besides parts distribution/service efficiency leading to the expert system ordering the service provider to handle it with a complete replacement.

31 points by ptaipale 12y ago

Very nice. Perhaps this info will reach the stealerships, allowing them to clean high voltage battery contacts when that is all that's needed, rather than replacing the entire... bwahahahahahahahaha

Terretta 12y ago
They'll clean it up this way, but still charge for the replacement. Profit!
- rgarrett88 12y ago
  That would be illegal. What they will do though is offer you a discounted refurbished battery from the last car that came in for $3,000 and take yours. Then the cycle repeats.

funkwyrm 12y ago

Wild to see imgur becoming a blog platform.

wodenokoto 12y ago
Having the imgur URL will really blow up your karma on reddit. People there consider imgur to be fast and reliable in delivering pictures, and posts imgur are expected to be focused on images with perhaps short explanatory texts. Most blogs are focused on text with some images.

A_COMPUTER 12y ago

Can I assume they knew they could check this and just figured they could take him for a ride? Or are dealerships really that hands-off?

ptaipale 12y ago
I would think that they don't care, because they don't need to. Such a small proportion of their clients has enough understanding to clean up connectors to batteries, that there is no expectation of having this kind of competence.
RickS 12y ago
Dealerships are that hands off. In the same way that many smaller electronics could be fixed with a $0.15 capacitor swap, but the guy behind the counter at radioshack has no idea about the inner workings at such a fine level. The company can't afford to hire, train, and retain employees with such a high baseline level of competence. Proprietary parts like this prevent the kind of general knowledge that previously made mechanics more useful. Nowadays a code tells them what's broken, a piece of software tells them what part that is, and at what level to repair/replace it. I had a similar experience when my Accord's speedometer broke. The dealership considers the entire dash cluster a single unit for manufacturing purposes, and wanted $700 for the bulk part. The guy behind the counter showed me the software and explained the process when I asked about why it was such an arbitrarily rigid decision. $20 on craigslist and an hour with a screwdriver, I replaced the individual component with a salvage part.
- A_COMPUTER 12y ago
  The only reason I didn't immediately go to basically what you have said is, it appeared it wasn't too difficult to remove the battery and clean the contacts. You'd think this could be a troubleshooting step. Oftentimes systems are like this because they aren't serviceable at all, which I understand. Dashboards are funny, I've run into the same thing and they really are awful to remove and work on.
  - kw71 12y ago
    My first guess is that, for customer liability (incorrect field repair could feasibly cause fire; the uncontrolled nature of field repairs may have affects on reliability later) and employee safety (careless tech could burn himself on battery) the carmaker does not want anyone except the assembly manufacturer or a special purpose facility to do this kind of work on the battery assembly. So there could be additional motives besides parts distribution/service efficiency leading to the expert system ordering the service provider to handle it with a complete replacement.