This is Rediculous

[Bohdan]

Years ago needed a fuel filter for my fuel injected Range Rover. Went to the dealer and was quoted well over a hundred dollars for one.

Asked about one for a Discovery, same engine, same fuel filter, price was about half.

On further examination of the one in my car, pulled the RR sticker off to reveal that it was a Bosch filter as fitted to Fords.

Available for about $20.

The price of spare parts is based on a percentage of the retail price of the car.

The ACCC investigated this pricing gouge and concluded that it was a fair and reasonable system.

[D.W.]

Years ago needed a fuel filter for my fuel injected Range Rover. Went to the dealer and was quoted well over a hundred dollars for one.

Asked about one for a Discovery, same engine, same fuel filter, price was about half.

On further examination of the one in my car, pulled the RR sticker off to reveal that it was a Bosch filter as fitted to Fords.

Available for about $20.

The price of spare parts is based on a percentage of the retail price of the car.

The ACCC investigated this pricing gouge and concluded that it was a fair and reasonable system.

Not sure about the laws there vs. here (the states), but at one point, my wife had a VW with coil over plug setup for ignition. Those are easy enough to work on but early 2000s, some cars would go through them at one a year minimum. I would fix them (should say I did), but the first attempt to fix one led to me going to the parts counter to get a part. Low inventory - but I managed to get one. Of course, the least reliable parts and most in demand are those that run short the most often until the parts companies get a sense of just how much demand there will be.

At any rate, next time around, a year or so later, I went online to an OEM parts place in ohio that specialize in VW and fortunately, they had genuine VW parts stocked and I purchased one. These were probably also bosch parts, but I can't remember - it's it's bosch, it will break. First your wallet, then itself.

$45 (about $70 or so in current dollars) for the VW variety, $90 for the same identical part for an audi and $132 for a mercedes.

All parts the same, but with a slightly different top connector. Literally, the molded plastic shape on the top tip prevents people in the upper ranges from getting the same part. Follows what you say, but I knew that at the time as the standard service items were also between 3 and 10 times as high for the premium brands. I'm guessing those services are gone now, but the BMW 30k mile service for some cars was 3 grand. One would guess it involved changing the oil, changing some air filters and then "checking" about 100 things and doing very little.

It was something stupid for VW itself, like $700, but just a glorified oil and air filter change. I bought the service manual instead and skipped it and only changed things that actually needed to be changed by the service manual and update bulletin schedules.

The coil over plug modules were cheaply made, but they generally are. Some of the ones I've seen since have switched the columns to heat resistant plastic. I often wondered when I changed one in the wife's car or a later toyota in about 10 minutes including code reading to find which cylinder was responsible - how much does someone with a misfire on cylinder 3 on their mercedes pay when they bring their car in and get the coil over plug fixed. $132 was the parts price. The service ticket part cost would be marked up 100-300% of that in the US typically. And I'm sure there would be labor plus diagnostic. For <10 minutes of a tech's time and a part that probably wholesales for VW at $20 or less, the mercedes buyer probably got stuck with $600. Only to return again in a year when another cylinder did the same.

[D.W.]

well, to my pleasant surprise, the online estimators now say that the expected cost for a benz ignition coil replacement (at an independent mechanic) is $171-$300. Could be worse. Aftermarket coils are all over the place for about the cost of most other cars.

I wonder how much grief MB and others got over some of that stuff, and am genuinely curious as to why they backed off on the cost of something routine like that.

[david.elliott]

Watched Furious Driving YT last week doing a short on changing a Mini Clubman globe...38 POUNDS...
My favourite YT mechanic is in upstate New York. Lady came in with a 1 year old Chevy something with a non functioning brake light. Easy says Eric, I'll change the bulb. Nope, whole light unit is LED and sealed. USD740.00

[D.W.]

GM and Ford's argument against the japanese brands used to be that they'd be cheap to repair when repair was needed. For some reason, Chrysler hasn't followed that for a long time.

I guess GM and ford have decided that they'll no longer do that, but even Toyota here is now making turds, and hyundai/kia has managed to make engines that suddenly have oil consumption issues but don't warn you.

I know the latter because for four cylinders, it's public knowledge. It supposedly didn't apply to 6 cylinders, but the mrs. had a santa fe gls for a while, which had the otherwise wonderful 290hp 3.3DI motor. At 80k miles, it suddenly started consuming oil faster and only because I heard it creak did I know that within a month, it had gotten to 1.5 quarts on a 6.3 capacity sump!!

And then on the way back from a long trip monitoring the actual oil consumption, a tractor trailer hit us in the snow on the interstate and wiped us off of the road eliminating worrying about that any longer (fortunately, nobody hurt, but car destroyed).

At any rate, GM and ford used to have a lot of crap here but a couple of models that would go and go. For ford, it was the mazda partnership V6 rangers and the panther platform that could rival a mechanical mercedes for longevity (back when benz was a well made car made by engineers). For GM, the pickups were super until about 12 years ago, and...I'm struggling to think of anything else, but I'm sure there was something....oh the buick century platform and the 3800 platform cars a size up. Fantastic.

I guess that stuff has been lost to the idea that reliability is something to boast about vs. a threat to revenue on the repair side.