Is this fair? Please help!
 

Well, I gave up on dealing with the emissions/idle issue that I've been having, so I decided to suck it up and bring it into a mechanic. I found this guy who has worked on rotaries a bunch of times (in fact, I even spotted a 13b in the back of the shop that he said he was gonna fix up). Anyway, not the nicest guy in the world, but said he guaranteed he'd make it pass emissions.

Anywho, he just called me with his diagnosis, plus cost estimate:

- power brake booster: says it's sucking up some vaccum and needs replacing. Estimated: $175 from a junkyard (with warranty)

- air flow meter: needs replacing. Estimated: $200 from a junkyard (with warranty).

- ECU: not reading signals and needs to be reprogammed (or whatever the right term is). Estimated cost: $350 (with 2 year, 30K mile warranty)

So with labor and all this will easily cost me 1000 bucks!

Is this way too expensive? What do you guys think? I need to make a decision soon, so I'd appreciate any advice.

The car altogether is nice enough that it's definitely worth fixing, but I don't have too much money. I would have to call my dad and ask him for a loan and hear his whole 'I told you so' speech.

On the other hand, I've had this car for about a year and a half now and it's been incredibly low maintenance, so I guess putting money into a car is merely a consequence of owning one.

Sounds fishy to me. Isint there a furum member near you who could help you diagnose this? :( Maybe post in the SE scetion for help?

What sounds fishier, the diagnosis, or the price estimate?

The whole thing sounds fishy to me.

you could get the parts here a lot cheeper, those sound almost like new prices with markup.

Well, I was in talks with a potential buyer from PA... I'm sure it could get fixed for a lot less up there, so maybe we'll compromise somehow. You're right, though... it sounds fishy to me too.

Hades12: Where in GA is Snellville? I'd be willing to drive out if I could get a much better deal. And that goes to anyone else... If somebody knows where I could take it, I'll definitely look into a road trip.

Scam!

Dont trust an asshole ! ! !

get a diagnosis from a dealership and fix it yourself?

or

fuck emissions and find somone who has an adress where you dont need emissions ! ! !

Free diagnosis from a dealer, eh? That sounds pretty paranoid.... I love it!
So you guys think that I could get these kind of parts in the For Sale/Wanted section for much cheaper? I would be afraid to get them used and then find out that they don't work though!

I ment the for sale section. And then just do the work your self.

Ah, of course! Now, I haven't read the Haynes manual on these topics yet, but would these be easy to replace myself?

I believe that all of those components are pretty simple to swap out. As long as you have a decent set of wrenches, I would just start calling junkyards in the area and do the work myself. I would imagine that you could swap all three items in under an hour, and most yards will tell you that if it doesn't work you can get a full refund or replacement.

Hell, if you want to bring it up to Michigan I'll do it for you for 1/3 that price and still feel guilty enough to buy you dinner! LOL.

Grand Rapids, eh?... that's only 8 hours away... hmmmm, worth considering!

Rotaryseven86 might sell me the parts for less than 100, and I'll try to put them in myself. I hope adjusting the AFM is not too difficult. I guess the problem with buying from another forum member is that you don't have any guarantees... but I might just take the risk. Thanks for the words of encouragement everyone, I certainly feel a lot more positive now!

Wow, a programmable ECU on an SE...

How are the muffler bearings? I have a set for you for only $50 installed and guaranteed for 2 years!!!

I used the word 'reprogrammed' rather arbitrarily, I'm sure most people know what I meant.

No need to be a dick.

On most cars the AFM is 4 screws and a wire plug.

Nuts. Rebuilt brake booster from autozone == $81.

I'm not sure about the AFM or the ECU, but used ones can't be that much and all 3 are very easy to replace yourself.

nice and fast, oh, yeah...

Ok, from one SE owner to another, please read the following and then think about it before you go begging to a parent, or sell the car;

- power brake booster: says it's sucking up some vaccum and needs replacing. Estimated: $175 from a junkyard (with warranty) - Well, that's it's job - sucking up vacuum, that's how you get power brakes. Very unlikely that this is causing anything more than a vacuum leak, if that's the case, fix the feed line from your intake manifold, and/or buy a new booster from VB (www.victoriabritish.com).

- air flow meter: needs replacing. Estimated: $200 from a junkyard (with warranty). Either it works or it doesn't. More than likely, the AFM is fine and something else is out of adjustment. There is a lot of stuff on an SE that can go wrong with idle and other compensating devices - the AFM is one of the LEAST likely things to cause a problem (20yrs and 178k miles on my SE tells me so).

- ECU: not reading signals and needs to be reprogammed (or whatever the right term is). Estimated cost: $350 (with 2 year, 30K mile warranty) - Complete BS on this one. Like most computers it either works or it doesn't. If it doesn't replace it. The cost on this is very high considering they are easy to find on the 'net.


It would appear that your 'unfriendly' mechanic is trying to get money out of you because you don't know how to fix it yourself. If you knew how to fix it, you wouldn't be there, so you obviously won't know if he's giving you BS or not. Well, now you do.

My suggestion would be to fire up a new thread, explicitly state what the problem is, and let the forum go to work. The work you perform yourself is much better than ANYTHING you get from an independent mechanic or the dealer - learn something in the process. It's not that hard to troubleshoot SE problems, and the rewards are many.

Let us know what you decide to do,

Fast forum, god I love it...

Don't mind me, just passing through,

Thanks LongDuck. I just got in touch with David Garfinkle (some of you may have heard of him) and he is parting out an 84 SE. He only lives 45 minutes from me so he invited me to come down and try some of his parts.

It makes sense (to me) that my ECU might not be doing the right thing. I just installed a brand new O2 sensor in there... not only did it not make a difference whatsoever, but if I disconect it and run the car without it, the performance does not change at all. I'm gonna run the error code method before swapping ECUs just in case.

My question is, if i end up swapping ECUs, do I need to drain the battery before removing the original one? I've heard something to this extent, but I'm not too sure what the general concensus is on this one.