My business partner recentley had to have a new oil pan put on her 95 Pontiac Grand AM. Her mechanic called her up when the job was done and asked if she was sitting down. The cost for the job was $1100.00. This to me seems incredibly expensive since I have changed oil pan seals on a couple of different cars. Her mechanic told her this was the worst car in the world to change an oil pan on since it is so inaccessible. True or Booooogus?
Chilton labor times are 2.9hrs for the 4 banger with AC and 3.3hr for the V6 with AC.
Labor times at a dealer are often over $100/hr. The pan itself probably cost over $100.
Even if you factor in oil, a filter, a gasket, sealant, some miscellaneous hardware, etc., the $1100 charge seems kind of high.
Perhaps the mechanic ran into the proverbial learning curve and charged accordingly. Perhaps some bolts broke and he had to extract them.
I suspect there’s more to this story than a straight up oil pan replacement.
I think a little price gouging (maybe a lot) was going on with this job so I vote…bogus. The price is probably about double of what it should have been.
Maybe my minimum service charge of $950 for anything under the hood and not involving spark plugs has been adopted as the norm. I won’t ever get the money because I won’t actually do anything, but somebody thinks he should get his.
Need more information. Why was the oil pan replaced? Where do you live? Was there any other work done related to the oil pan removal?
A plain by-the-book oil pan replacement would be about $6-700. But this car is now 18 years old. The older the car is the harder it is to work on. Some places add a percentage to the labor time for cars over a certain age.
If I recall, removing the oil pan on this car requires jacking the engine up from the frame. Was one or more of the motor mounts bad and requiring replacement to do the job right? Is there salt or snow on the road in the winter? Rust has a way of making repairs take twice as long. Was a bolt somewhere seized or broken requiring drilling or extraction? Any of these things (and more) are the customer’s responsibility and will be added to the bill.
Turns out he also changed two motor mounts and freed up a stuck brake cable. So I guess the price wasn’t that far out of line. But I don’t believe the car is worth $1100!
Thanks for the update
The motor mounts probably added at least another $100 in parts, if not more, plus at least another hour or so in labor, plus whatever the labor costs were to free up the brake cable
I’ve not done motor mounts on this particular car, but they can be a bear on certain applications
That $1100 charge doesn’t really seem like science fiction anymore
In the 90’s a redesign of the Quad 4 involved a new oil pump, oil pan and dip stick/tube and any repair to early engines required updating to the newer parts. I am curious if that is the situation. The parts were several hundred dollars.