Biggest car repair bill you've ever had?

[Crackers]

In anticipation of a sizeable chunk of money leaving my bank account to get my Jag running again, I thought it would fun* to compare sizes. 

Of repair bills. 

I'll start; my most expensive so far was somewhere around £800 for quite a few items on my MX5, which stung a bit but was actually reasonable value for the work done. 

Yours? 

 

[purplebargeken]

795 lol

[Jazoli]

Engine rebuild on an S13 200SX plus big turbo and intercooler and other associated bits came to just under £2.6k and change 25 odd years ago.

Small beer compared to my neighbour who has just spent £11k at JLR on a new engine for his four year old Range Rover, which again is nothing compared to his mate who races in the Porsche Cup and has just had a £30k bill to refresh his car pre-season.

[Split_Pin]

The e46 gearbox replacement, all in, cost me £950. I wanted to see it live on though, perhaps not with me in the future though, I'll see.

[Marshall2810]

Fuck that

[reb]

I think my biggest was £600odd replacing the front subframe and everything attached to it on my £300 mk4 golf. It was even more once it went for tyres afterwards.

Approximately three days later it transpired that it was terminally rotten. It had a week's MOT left at that point.

 

I wasn't the one to pay for it though, I actually wanted to just replace the car but dad reckoned it was worth saving after the subframe snapped so took over getting it fixed. I don't know how neither he or tame mechanic spotted the large quantity of cornflakes where the passenger sill should have been.

 

I dread to think how much that repair would have cost with parts that didn't come from eastern europe and paying not mates rates for a mechanic's time.

[Dobloseven]

Early 2023,4 Cross Climates on MrsDs Korando.Plus 4 wheel alignment.Well over 600quid,though did get a bit back from Michelin as part of a promotion.Took ages,though.

[garethj]

Nearly 3 grand in the mid 90s for an engine rebuild on the Tatra.  That’s about £6k now, and the fucking thing still leaked oil afterwards.

£1200 for a clutch and dual mass flywheel on the BMW stung last year too, but that came a month before a “major service” which was the best part of a grand.  Naturally I sold the car for £800 showing the kind of astute financial responsibility that most of us have seen before.

[St.Jude]

~£1,700, when I did the injectors on the Land Cruiser. Myself. That’s just parts.

Yep.

[inconsistant]

£900 on a tatty 12yr old £150,000 miles Audi A6 1.8T that we should have scrapped but instead we got a replacement windscreen, 2 new tyres and a new exhaust to get it through an MOT. Sold it 2 months later, almost immediately the new owners wrecked the engine by not refitting the sump plug properly after changing the oil and scrapped the car. 

[Peter C]

25 years ago I had an XJ40 3.6 Sovereign, nice but worth not much more than about £2k. 

I had it serviced by an independent Jag specialist, who called me and said that the front suspension is shot, various things need doing urgently…. I paid £1,800 inc VAT.

[Dyslexic Viking]

Just over 2100 on some welding on the Mercedes.

[Marshall2810]

2 minutes ago, Peter C said:

25 years ago I had an XJ40 3.6 Sovereign, nice but worth not much more than about £2k. 

I had it serviced by an independent Jag specialist, who called me and said that the front suspension is shot, various things need doing urgently…. I paid £1,800 inc VAT.

I'd rather die

[Christine]

Waiting for Xtriple, and his Specialist Cars bill !  

 

Oh....... he's only posting on the other channel  ! 

[Dobloseven]

Watch this space.Concentric clutch slave cylinder has completely failed without warning on MrsDs Ssangyong Korando.Car was recovered home and is currently completely immobile.Weighing up options at the moment.Had a quote from local parts place for Sachs cylinder, clutch and DMF for about 430 quid,but back order,and will they fit?

[Marshall2810]

11 minutes ago, Dobloseven said:

Watch this space.Concentric clutch slave cylinder has completely failed without warning on MrsDs Ssangyong Korando.Car was recovered home and is currently completely immobile.Weighing up options at the moment.Had a quote from local parts place for Sachs cylinder, clutch and DMF for about 430 quid,but back order,and will they fit?

Don't know why you'd bother, get the scrap back and roll the dice on a £500 shitter with plenty of mot  

[artdjones]

€380 on a 4 part clutch kit for our C5 ( fitted by me on the front drive.)

[Crackers]

God I'm an idiot, can a mod move this to main forum please? 

[sierraman]

14 minutes ago, Marshall2810 said:

Don't know why you'd bother, get the scrap back and roll the dice on a £500 shitter with plenty of mot  

If he knows the car why replace a known quantity with one of these fucked £500 cars that will very likely be even worse? 

[Marshall2810]

8 minutes ago, sierraman said:

If he knows the car why replace a known quantity with one of these fucked £500 cars that will very likely be even worse? 

If you buy a fucked one you must be mental

[Dobloseven]

2 minutes ago, sierraman said:

If he knows the car why replace a known quantity with one of these fucked £500 cars that will very likely be even worse? 

Car was bought new in 2015(65 reg).Done around 90k miles,has been very reliable and kept well maintained.Excellent towcar with 4wd I'm in the fortunate(?)position of having up to three old cars to use while I weigh things up and another modern car for towing with.Itll definitely get repaired,not sure when and by whom,though.

[sierraman]

3 minutes ago, Marshall2810 said:

If you buy a fucked one you must be mental

£500 it’ll just be complete rubbish. 

[Stanky]

Good thread OP, I was thinking about this only the other day.

Somehow, I have never stared down the barrel of a monster repair bill. I'm not sure how, I've owned some right old junk over the years, but I've never had a whopper of a bill. Some of that is due to me fixing things myself, some of it is to do with being massively fortunate to know people who can do things I can't and who do things at mates rates in exchange for things I can do in return for them, and most of it is down to luck. I seem to either get by with minor repairs in then <£250 range, or the car is comprehensively broken and goes for scrap because its not even worth the time of me/the garage pricing up what would be needed.

I think the biggest bill I have ever paid would have been about £400 for a cambelt, waterpump, thermostat and a load of other minor things that it made sense for the garage to do 'while they were in there' on my wife's old Daewoo Lacetti - the belt was original (at 13 years old, interval is 4 years) and I would assume the WP was too. Seemed like a sensible thing to do and only brought the purchase and immediate work price to about £1200. It lasted 3 years IIRC before it developed a weird misfire and I scrapped it after £40 of new coils, leads and plugs failed to fix it and I just couldn't be bothered to spend hours trying to work out what was wrong with it (with the only code being 'multiple misfire detected') in January a few years back. I still got £350 back for it at the weighbridge.

I consider myself very fortunate.

[autopaul]

£3k when the cambelt snapped on the van. But for that I got a 60k mile engine, new dmf and clutch kit. Original engine had 150k. And sold the old block for £500

[Dyslexic Viking]

52 minutes ago, Crackers said:

God I'm an idiot, can a mod move this to main forum please? 

@Mrs6C

[DavieW]

Spend about £800 taking a 1700 x-flow to 150bhp in the late 80s for my Westfield. 

[Dyslexic Viking]

This is related. How much does a garage usually charge per hour in the UK? Here, I think you won't find anyone under 100 and main dealers in the cities it is probably well over 140. But my figures may be out of date and it is even more expensive.

[CreepingJesus]

That would be the infamous Volvo V70 MOT debacle, which I've mentioned before. That one where the local independent workshop were quoting about £750 iirc, but didn't really seem to want to do it (a couple of the old hands I trusted, had semi retired, so the old school nature of the place was ebbing away.), so I thought I'd try the local Volvo specialist. The bottom line was about £1200, but once I'd added in the costs around it, it was nearer £1500 I think. That was including the CV joint the specialist knackered, that I'd to pay for. 

[MikeR]

300 notes when the escort dumped it's gearbox and clutch all over the road many years ago , back on the road 2 days later with another box and clutch ... Which was the same price as a new clutch for the C1 ... 

[camryv6]

About ten years ago £550 for a second hand ECU on a Ford Ranger.