My Honda Accord 2006 is at the dealer. I am preparing for a trip and the car is at about 69,000 miles. It was suggested the timing belt be replace since it never has been and I agreed to that. On this vehicle the serpentine belt is replaced with others to avoid further problems such as broken water pump, etc. They called me a little while ago saying the oil pump is leaking. It is an additional three hours labor. I’m getting the old line that if they close it up now without fixing it, later it will be 10 hours of labor and at least $1100 just to begin.
I went in with a rough estimate in the upper $900’s to do the belts, tensioner, etc. During the call back he said something like, "Oh, and I forgot to add the tensioner, which will bring it up to over $1500.00. Thus, with the addition of the leaking oil pump and three hours’labor it went from right around $1000.00 to almost $1600. Granted, this is the Pacific Northwest (Washington state) in an area more expensive than where I’m from (N.C.) and no sales tax (but you get nailed by higher service prices and higer line item costs). So … reasonable, or unreasonable? Sounds like a fleecing to me…
It is possible they didn’t see the leaky oil pump until the timing case cover and timing belt were removed
As for the omission of the belt tensioner, that was just plain bad planning on the service writer’s part
I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt as far as the oil pump goes. On my car, I didn’t know my water pump was leaking until I had the timing case cover removed. Fortunately for me, I do all my on work and had a timing belt kit, including water pump, seals, tensioner, idler, etd., , on hand, before I started tearing things down
I am not familiar with modern cars but the first thing I don’t understand is how a leaking (gasket?) oil pump was discovered during a timing belt change? What really confuses me is WA having no sales tax. I am in OR which has never had a sales tax. They make up for it with a high State income tax. Is that what they did in WA? Threatening you with the additional 7 hours labor if you don’t fix the oil pump now is an old scare tactic. I’m sure the experts here can advise if this is a fleecing.
Sounds like this shop is trying to maximize its profit and is willing to say anything to get your money. Find an honest shop. Can they show you the oil leak? If oil’s leaking, it should just be a gasket, not the oil pump.
At only 69,000 mles, I’d wait on the other stuff too. (Yea, it’s 8 years old, but that’s not very old.)
I give the dealer a pass on the oil pump leakage as it is quite common to tear into something and find other problems that were not apparent when everything was in one piece.
Agreed that it was bad planning for the service advisor to not have considered the tensioner part of the repair when working up an estimate.
It could be that this oil pump reseal is running 3 hours extra due to pump removal.
There is some murkiness in the complaint as the way it is stated could be taken to mean the dealer is charging 500 bucks for a tensioner. The ensuing statement then refers to 3 hours of labor and an oil pump reseal with a 100 dollars tacked on.
This is assumed by me to be an error in the way it’s presented and the roughly 600 dollars includes the tensioner, oil pump seal kit and peripherals, and the 3 hours labor.
My assumption is that the NW WA area probably has labor rates in the 100 dollars an hour range or even more so offhand I don’t see anything out of line other than the tensioner being missed on the original estimate.
Just curious, but a quick look at RepairPal shows that job priced out from near 1100 to over 1500 dollars for the NW WA zip area and that doesn’t include any oil pump seals.
So to me the 1600 is a fair amount and could theoretically run even higher.
While this is not OP’s oil pump, it is apparent that it can be partially resealed (3 out of 4 seals) without entirely removing the pump from the engine, and without removing the pan
And it is also clear that replacing the front crank seal will only go so far, as far as resealing the pump goes
And it’s also sometimes not possible to know exactly which one of the 4 seals is causing the leak, not until removing the timing case cover, anyways
The OP never said he had a V6, everyone is assuming that because the 4 cylinder doesn’t have a belt. What if he has a 4 cylinder and the dealer is really ripping him off?
BTW, I know this is apples and oranges, but I had the timing belt service done on our 97 4 cylinder Accord and it only cost me $10 more to have the oil pump seals replaced, at the dealer.
There is a difference between a front crankshaft seal and an oil pump gasket. It is unlikely the repair would stop for a front crankshaft seal. A leaking oil pump housing would be more significant.