Quote:
Originally Posted by PR370z
In my case, I would get the service manual and do almost all the work on my cars myself. Good mechanics are hard to find. My stories at my Nissan dealer are out of this world, sometimes it seems that they NEVER had worked on a 370 before.
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The question here is...is it really cost-effective?
I worked on my own cars all through highschool and college, except for jobs I didn't have tools for (clutch-swap on my WS6, re-building the rear-end, etc.) because I had no real source of meaningful income.
Now the question is: Would I rather go in to work for a few hours and cover the labor, or would I rather spend a few hours doing the labor myself? When I work on it, it has no warranty. When they do, it's their baby, not mine. It breaks, not my problem.
For me, having the dealership work on the car is annoying, as I know they are ripping me off for some things, but on another point, it's "guaranteed". Basically, I am betting that it will break again, they are betting it won't, and I don't want to cut my hands up or smash a finger or worse out in the cold working on my own car beyond minor maintenance items like AC filters, oil, plugs/wires, etc.
When it came to doing the motor-mounts, changing the thermostat (A PITA on a G20, apparently), etc. I just made it their issue and not mine.
I cannot imagine an E92 M3 or IS-F being very fun to work on, or very practical without specialized tools.