2 weeks ago I over heated the engine of my volvo wagon c70. The owner of the shop explained the possible scenarios to me which were all pretty expensive. He told me that if worst case the engine was shot that I would only owe him for the breakdown. In my mind I thought perhaps a few hundred dollars for the breakdown(my fault for not asking). Turns out the engine is shot and he wants $750 (8 hrs labor at $92). I’ve asked around and been told that taking a gasket of the volvo should not take more than 3 hours (on the slow side). My mechanic will not budge and when I finally agreed to pay I said I do so after speaking to the mechanic who broke down the car (to hear how long it took him), the owner declined to let me speak to him and hung up on me. Am I being taken???
What is fair??
since you did not get a written/signed estimate for the cost of break-down inspection I guess you are stuck.
In CA,no written,signed estimate,the garage cannot charge you. Bureau of Automotive Repair rules.
Enforcement is loss of his BAR certificate.
We don’t really know enough about your situation to comment intelligently.
If you “engine is shot” it would probably cost about $4500 for a rebuilt engine if you’re lucky. So we assume the engine is not shot, but needs to be repaired.
IF only a head gasket was damaged, and the head was still perfectly flat (not likely)then $750 for labor plus parts (more parts than just the gasket)is very reasonable. You would count yourself very fortunate to be able to get a Volvo head gasket problem properly fixed for only that much!!! A friend of my wife had the same problem with a Saturn (a problem plagued model) and the quote was $900.
You would have to give us the complete quoted diagnosis plus repair estimate before we can comment more.
Just as a background info., what caused the engine to overheat? Low coolant, coolant not changed on time? What is the year and mileage on the car?
ANY junkyard mechanic can pull an engine and strip it down to it’s component parts in less than two hours…
“2 weeks ago I over heated the engine of my volvo wagon c70.” Please, how exactly did you do that? Did you keep driving it (after the red lights came on) until it just quit? Even Volvo engines can survive a moderate episode of overheating without serious damage. Why not just repair the immediate problem and drive on and see what happens…