Today I took my front steering knuckles to a reputable local shop. The guy goes to my church and does real good work, especially on Hondas (does excellent alignments also), and his father owns the shop. I got the lower ball joints and the wheel bearings replaced, just because they were all original parts with 240,000 miles on them, so I wanted to go ahead and get them done.

So to save some money, I took the parts off the car myself last night, and took the knuckles up to the shop in my gf's car. The parts ended up being $150 (a touch cheaper than I could have gotten them from Len at Baranco Acura) and the labor to press the ball joints, and press the hubs and bearings was another $120 or so, and it ended up being $300 even with tax and everything.

It sounds like alot to me, but I think the wheel bearings added a bunch to the price. I had not originally planned on replacing the wheel bearings, but I figured I would since I would have the knuckles off anyway and didn't want to pay for a 2nd alignment (which I'm going back to the shop tomorrow to get that done, for another $60).

Thoughts? I'm going to ask him tomorrow how much it would have been if I had just brought the car up there and he had to take everything apart and put it back together.

*edit* I also told him my right upper control arm bushings were squeeking really bad, and he hooked me up with a couple sets of new UCA bolts w/ good bushings in them, at no extra charge.

 

$120 is basically 2 hours worth of work. its not outrageous for two sets of knuckles, but its not completely overpriced. i dont think you saved any money by taking the knuckles off yourself in labor.

shops need to make money. i certainly cant blame them for that.

but for $120, id have a 12 ton press bought and shipped to my door from harbor freight and could have done it myself.

i just dont like paying for labor, but if youre not willing or able to do it yourself, then thats just what you gotta do.

 

Yeah it took right at 2 hours. I dropped them off around 7:30 this morning and he called me back right at 9:30 saying they were ready.

I thought of getting my own press, but the Helms shows all those different special tools used when removing and replacing ball joints and wheel bearings, and I was concerned that I wouldn't be able to get the tools I needed, or that it would be really expensive.

 

its fairly simple if you own your own press a the tool that was designed to install wheel bearings on fwd drive cars which is only 250 from snap-on now i charge people to do it cause some are too lazy are just not educated enuf to do it themselves so i teach them!!!!!!!!!!!!!! should've tried to do it yourself so you can LEARN

edit: meant to say "or" instead of a.

 

I'm sure I could have done it myself with the tools. But honestly, the original ball joints and wheel bearings had 240,000 miles on them. I don't plan on having to change them again before I get something else.

I didn't make this thread to discuss if I should have done it myself or not. I made it to see if the price I was charged sounded fair.

This work today, alignments, tire stuff, and my removed exhaust resonator are the only things I've never done myself. Everything else including clutch and flywheel replacement and timing belt/water pump replacement I have done on my own, from the time I bought it at 89K miles to now at 240K miles.

 

Well then honestly i have a friend that took his hubsto a shop that were already seperated from the knuckles and had them press in with the new bearing and then the hub and he only got charged 40$

 

I got charged $15 at napa to press in a new wheelbearing and hub.