My Cobalt had needed control arm bushings and struts for a lengthy amount of time, and after a long debate I decided to save myself the hassle and have a shop do it. For fear of having issues with the captured nut that is nearly impossible to reach if it breaks free.
The quote went from $550 (canuck bucks) for installation and alignment, to $820 for the extra time they had to spend getting the bolt out when one broke. So all in all, including parts I ended up spending about $1750 (new struts, control arms).
Now even though this is pretty expensive, this car doesn't owe me anything and has been overall fantastic between mileage and reliability.
I got the car back (thursday night) and it's driving like new, and I'm loving it.
Yesterday I decided to finish bringing it back up to 100% by replacing the downstream o2 which was causing the CEL.
In the midst of that job I had a look at what they did with the suspension work..
The passenger side is fine, but the drivers side...
This does not give me a warm and fuzzy feeling after spending that much money. Now given that I know how much of a pain this job seems to turn out being from the research I did when I was considering doing it myself, I'm trying to give them some slack.. but I'm worried that this could be unsafe. It seems to be okay, I just wanted to gather some insight from you guys with more experience than myself.
A few other points,
- The stickers that come on top of the struts stating caution, they stuck one on the airbox and they left the other on the strut which now makes it trapped with it installed. I'm not worried about driveability with this, but really, I just spend some decent coin at this shop. Seems kinda ignorant.
- They charged me for an alignment, but it doesn't look like they adjusted the tie-rods at all.. I'm wondering if they even did one at this point. I guess it's possible that they checked it and it was bang on and they charged me for that?
- This shop has glowing reviews, and I find that pretty interesting based on my overall experience.
Cliff notes;
- Questionable work at the shop I brought my car to for suspension work
- Safe?
- Do I have good reason to be aggravated by this?
The quote went from $550 (canuck bucks) for installation and alignment, to $820 for the extra time they had to spend getting the bolt out when one broke. So all in all, including parts I ended up spending about $1750 (new struts, control arms).
Now even though this is pretty expensive, this car doesn't owe me anything and has been overall fantastic between mileage and reliability.
I got the car back (thursday night) and it's driving like new, and I'm loving it.
Yesterday I decided to finish bringing it back up to 100% by replacing the downstream o2 which was causing the CEL.
In the midst of that job I had a look at what they did with the suspension work..
The passenger side is fine, but the drivers side...
This does not give me a warm and fuzzy feeling after spending that much money. Now given that I know how much of a pain this job seems to turn out being from the research I did when I was considering doing it myself, I'm trying to give them some slack.. but I'm worried that this could be unsafe. It seems to be okay, I just wanted to gather some insight from you guys with more experience than myself.
A few other points,
- The stickers that come on top of the struts stating caution, they stuck one on the airbox and they left the other on the strut which now makes it trapped with it installed. I'm not worried about driveability with this, but really, I just spend some decent coin at this shop. Seems kinda ignorant.
- They charged me for an alignment, but it doesn't look like they adjusted the tie-rods at all.. I'm wondering if they even did one at this point. I guess it's possible that they checked it and it was bang on and they charged me for that?
- This shop has glowing reviews, and I find that pretty interesting based on my overall experience.
Cliff notes;
- Questionable work at the shop I brought my car to for suspension work
- Safe?
- Do I have good reason to be aggravated by this?