Transman, I am curious about the skyrocketing increases in the cost of rebuilding transmissions when there seems to be less to repair on the electronic models compared to those with shifts controlled by throttle pressure and manifold vacuum.
The only real changes from the old hydraulically controlled automatics to the electronic’s is in the valve bodies. Mechanically, they are the same, there were just electronics introduced to the valve bodies. You see some increases in diagnosing due to the introduction of the computer to the trans. They used to be very simple to diagnose but now you have to get a scanner involved, tracing wires, fixing pin connectors etc… Modern day trans techs now have less hair from all the aggrivation and hair pulling problems. LOL
transman
Transman, what exactly is involved in rebuilding a transmission?
Here is what I do on all of mine.
COMPLETELY disassemble, this is removing all assemblies from the case until the case is bare.
COMPLETELY disassemble all assemblies (Inc valve body and pump assy.)
Vat and AIR DRY all parts. (Valve bodies and their parts I keep in an air tight container to keep them free from dust and other particles until I am ready to inspect it).
Inspect all parts for excess wear. Anything out of or close to being out of tolerance is scrapped.
Replace ALL bushings, seals, sealing rings, and thrust washers.
Re-assemble clutch packs using new Borg-Warner Hi-Energy clutches and steels and adjust clutch clearance.
Replace bands (For units with them) with Borg-Warner Hi-Energy band and adjust (The ones which are adjustable).
Re-Assemble pump assy using new pump parts.
Do all upgrades that are called for that particular transmission.
I then reassemble the transmission and cover it with plastic to keep dirt particles out until I complete the valve body rebuild.
The valve body which is already disassembled and clean is reassembled after making sure it is flat and there are no ridges or excess wear in the bores. If there are, bore sleeves and new valves are installed. (Common in certain transmissions)
All new shift solenoids, PC solenoids, Temp sensors, downshift and PWM solenoids are installed on the valve body.
Install valve body, filter, and pan onto transmission.
Pour one bottle of Lube-Gard Red in the trans and seal dipstick tube.
Install and secure torque converter into transmission.
Wrap entire transmission in plastic and tag for customer.
Attach build sheet which has all specs and parts used in rebuild.
Collect my $$…
transman
Dealers seldom repair transmissions. The shop where I have my fluid changes done does the repair work for a local VW dealer. They have about 6-7 techs and all the right tools. I asked what they would charge for a Jetta tranny overhaul and I was given about $950 for that model. The dealer marked this up to nearly $2000 or so, since the alternative was more money for a rebuilt unit from VW.
The accounting at dealerships is so off the wall it is ridiculous. Would anyone open a full service automobile repair shop in a glass palace on 5 acre lot with 400 feet of frontage on a major thoroughfare and expect to make a profit changing oil and flushing transmissions? Dealerships charge all real estate costs to the service/parts department.The service and parts managers are left with the task of paying for everything. Markups are necessarily high. And the dealers must charge the paying customer the same per hour that they charge the manufacturer for warranty work even though the manufacturer has an automatic 30% discount in their labor.
This post really answered some questions for me. I only have 14K miles on my car and I was wondering when it was good to change Tyranny Fluid on a car.
Many dealers near me…
. Rarely do any transmission work. They’ll remove the tranny and send out to a transmission shop. Most if not all is farmed out. They may replace a clutch.
. Rarely do glass work. That’s also farmed out.
. Some of the smaller dealers don’t even do body-work. That’s also farmed out.
I know a GMC dealership in NY that does their own tranny work. In fact they do all GM transmission work for all the GM dealers in the area.
Every dealer I’ve worked for and the ones around here all do transmission work in-house. Usually the Big Three car makers have a dedicated transmission man (or men) who do nothing but transmission work.
With the foreign brands of cars the mechanic getting the complaint usually handles it no matter what with no one particular person being assigned to do transmissions only.
The reason dealers locate on prime real estate and major throughfares is for one reason only; traffic flow and economics. Without traffic in front of them business will dwindle and they will soon be belly-up.
If a city is expanding in a certain direction then the dealers have to follow that shift, or else.
The reason some dealers are not doing bodywork is because of vastly increased EPA regulations and the cost of conforming is not justified based on the volume of business. In some cases, 3 or 4 dealers may go in an operate a common body shop as a means of divvying up the costs.
Possibly I misspoke myself OK4450. My point was that the high traffic, high visibility location has an astronomically high price and that high price is on the books of the service department. All overhead is paid by the shop, and therefore by the shop’s customers. The automobile sales part of the business is riding the service part of the business to death.
“The dealer marked this up to nearly $2000 or so, since the alternative was more money for a rebuilt unit from VW.”
Part of the additional $1050 are the removal and installation fees. I’m sure Docnick did not mean that it is entirely mark-up, or overhead, but it came across that way to me.
When I worked at the GM dealership, the parts manager who was a friend of mine told me that they DOUBLE the price on parts from what they actually pay for them.
Customer pay price was doubled, warranty companies paid 25% over cost, and employees paid 10% over cost.
transman
My experience with parts is that something small (say 2 dollars) may have the price doubled but most parts were marked up incrementally. A 10 dollar part was 17, a 50 dollar part was 85, and so on.
The worst one for customer complaints was the 5 grand for a brand new, over the counter Subaru automatic transmission and that did not include labor, fluid, exhaust gaskets, tax, etc. Everyone thought the dealer was robbing them blind but the dealer cost on that unit was 3995 dollars and that equates to a 25% markup.
As to dealer labor costs, I fully understand they are what they are. The dealer expenses are obscenely high and it has to be covered somehow.
Around here the dealers have a 75-80 dollar an hour flat rate. Warranty rate is about 65 and independents are in the warranty rate neighborhood or a bit less.
Warranty rates are set by the car makers and believe me, the car makers are going to get by paying as little as economicially possible.
The gap in those rates is not that great.
Speaking of dealer expense, consider this. Back in the 80s Subaru ran a promotion where each dealer was giving a way a fast go-kart with a Subaru body on it. All customers had to do to was enter a ticket and wait a few weeks for the drawing. This was done of course to entice people onto the lots
What dealers found out, after the fact, was that corporate Subaru was billing each dealer close to 3 grand for that go-kart. Back in those days of 25-30 dollars an hour flat rate that means a lot of billable hours are required just to pay for that kart.
Around here the dealers have a 75-80 dollar an hour flat rate.
That’s cheap…here…about $110 in most dealers that I’ve seen.
Independents are about $75.
As for overhead…yea…they do have a high overhead…but they also make good money. When the economy is bad and people aren’t buying as many cars…the shop is the part that’s keeping them afloat and sending their kids to Harvard. But many of the big shops around here are owned by big national conglomerates.
On the topic of the very high cost of maintaining a large dealership on prime real estate, please allow me to share the tale told to me by the owner of the dealership where I have bought my last 3 cars. This is a small, family-run dealership located on a 2-lane road, rather than on a major highway, and I am on a first-name basis with the owner and the older employees.
Anyway–this dealership used to be a multi-line foreign car dealership. Once upon a time, they sold Fiats & MGs, in addition to Saabs and Subarus. Obviously, they stopped selling Fiats and MGs a long time ago, and by the '80s, they were down to just Saab and Subaru, which they sold in approximately equal numbers.
Fast forward to the era of GM ownership of Saab. One day, the dealer was notified that, if he wanted to retain his Saab franchise, he would have to relocate the dealership from the 2-lane road to the very heavily-traveled US Route 1, and he would have to erect a huge glass-front building approximately 5 times the size of the existing building. After crunching some numbers, the dealer realized that this was not likely to be a profitable move for him, and he turned the Saab management folks down, thus losing the franchise.
Well, guess what? Only a few years later, Saab sales really tanked, and a few years after that, Saab is now apparently gone from the automotive universe. I guess that he made the right decision, and while he is planning on expanding his old building, he remains in the same location as ever, selling an ever-increasing number of Subarus as a result of his fair treatment of his customers.
Perhaps the small businessman sometimes knows more than the corporate bigwigs.