My 2010 Acadia with ~53K miles had a fuel injector go bad. $1,200+ repair bill. I was told by the dealer service agent that when an injector goes bad it usually means it had an open circuit, and that is what happened to mine. Is there a known problem with the injectors? I have 5 more that could potentially fail and I am trying to determine the likelyhood this might happen again.
I would look at this as a fluke more than anything else. Injectors are mass produced in the countless millions and with any mass produced part there will be initial failures when new and at a comparatively young lifespan.
Bosch produces injectors for just about everyone and they’re usually trouble free. In the event that one fails in the future you might consider bypassing the dealer for this repair and have it done at an independent shop. Odds are the repair would be much cheaper. Hope that helps.
As usual, I agree with OK4450 100%.
And definitely find a reputable local independently owned and operated shop. There’s nothing about this diagnosis and repair that should bring the cost un to $1200. You can even use the independant for your oil changes and scheduled maintenance. Just save your copies of the shop orders for your records and your warraty will be honored should you ever need it.
You’ll need to list what was done for that $1200. A new injector is about $100 from Rockauto, say double that for a factory part and double that to cover labor, still only at $400.
Thanks much for the tips and advise–feeling like I was just bent over the desk by the dealer. Will request a full receipt and post it back here. Another challenge is finding a good independent shop. I have had work done in the past on different cars with supposedly reputable shops and it was not a good experience. In one case the mechanic installed the wrong sized rotar (to small a diameter). Was ok at first but I quickly developed braking problems.
Well, now you know why a lot of us here do our own mechanic work, @bkkebiz…
I agree with the others: they should at least be wearing full face masks for charging you 1200, if that’s all they did.
Attached is the invoice
Thanks for the info, but I wouldn’t leave your invoice there, too much personal information.
Good Lord almighty!
Did you authorize all this work?
There’s things on here that take 1/2 second, like “inspect tires for wear”.
There’s things that I seriously doubt that they did, like “lubricate door locks”.
And there’s things herte that don’t even exist on modern cars, like “lubricate chassis”.
And we wonder why nobody trusts mechanics!
Their labor rate must be through the roof. It should only take any reasonable mechanic a couple hours, tops, to gain access to and replace one or more of the fuel injectors on this engine. Also, $50 for seven o-rings that I have probably 50-60 of in my toolbox seems a little steep (I don’t take apart the rest of the injectors unless they are leaking, so only the bottom o-rings need to be replaced on the remaining injectors). For the record, I agree with the others that this was a fluke occurrence. Fuel injectors rarely go bad on this engine or any other engine.
Well, at least he got a complimentary wash.
For a $1200+ repair bill, it should have been a full detail.
Yup, along with a “bath”.
I feel bad. Since the economy tanked it seems like some dealerships and shops have become more and more brazen, and even dishonest, in attempting to maintain their cash flow.
I’m probably the odd one out again but that bill may not be much out of line, if at all, once it’s picked apart.
The only thing that makes me hesistate is not knowing what the flat rate time for the operations being performed is and the shop hourly flat rate charge. The east and west coasts are generally pretty high along with areas like Chicago, etc.
I will also note that the part about checking lighting, tires, etc. also includes an oil and filter change along with topping off the fluids; for 39.95 inclusive.
Texases correctly advised the OP to remove the invoice because of the personal information included, but did you, Ok4450, get a chance to review it before it was removed?
thanks all. All of those “checks” automatically print when they enter the oil change code into the work order system–clearly they don’t do most of them. Injector was not the only part, which was $182 (about twice what you can get if for online). don’t know if the other parts are needed but $90 for a tube? Car dealers make the majority of their money in the service dept and now I know why!
Mountainbike, I did get a chance to skim it over before it was removed and while there’s some murkiness on the repair order there wasn’t enough there for me to say yay or nay on whether the OP was gouged or not.
If the 39.95 was labor for the oil change and the list that goes with it then I don’t see that being too bad because this dealer is apparently in a high labor rate area (Washington, D.C.) where financial sanity does not exist anyway. 
If the dealer rate is 100 an hour then 40 dollars would be equivalent to .4 hours which is only 24 minutes and that’s an acceptable amount of time for an oil change, topping off fluids, checking tires, etc.
Seven something for an oil filter, 50 bucks for apparently 5 quarts of synthethic oil, and so on is not that bad.
The OP simply cannot compare the price of an injector on-line or at the local AutoZone to a dealer price simply because the dealer is paying more for that injector than what some internet vendor or AZ is paying.
As to labor on the injector and whatever processes were associated with this job it’s difficult to say what’s going on because the labor on that is not broken down and the shop rate is unknown. Did this labor charge include X hours of diagnostics including chasing codes, running fuel pressure tests, and so on? I have no idea.
Turns out my estimate was about right for the injector - $100 at Rockauto, it was about $185 from the dealer. (I guessed $200) I don’t understand why all the connecting lines needed to be replaced. Of course, none of us can see what was wrong, but a bad injector wouldn’t automatically damage the line, would it?
Because of the location of the injectors on a direct injection engine more labor is required to replace an injector compaired to a conventional fuel injected vehicle.
The retail labor to replace an injector is 3.3 hours plus diagnosis (common rate is 1.0 hour.) I have seen hourly rates as high as $150. They may have overcharged by 1/2 an hour.
When removing a fuel rail all of the injectors are removed from the cylinder head, all of the seals are to be replaced. The service manual states that the high pressure fuel pipe and the crossover tube are not reuseable.
As the injector was stuck open an oil change is required (with or without the free inspection).
Nevada’s comments are very enlightening to me anyway and make this bill more and more plausible and I also agree about the oil change scenario regarding gasoline contaminated engine oil.