sounds hugh and series, good luck
How many miles are on your ‘99 Olds Bravada?
He wants advice on houses of ill repute? How odd.
the parts alone are probably $150 for both upper and lower. Then you need to figure out how long the “book” says that job takes to do times the shop’s labor rate.
And yes, I would do both upper and lower at the same time. It will save you a ton of headaches down the road...
There should be sites on the Internet to give you a ball park estimate of the costs.
First replacing uppers and not both uppers and lowers is not unusual and is a lot less expensive than both.
Second $500 for the uppers alone is not bad.
Third a 4X4 is harder on the upper ball joints than the lower ball joints due to the stress of the front drive train and additional weight versus a non 4X4.
If the lowers don’t need to be replaced based on the recommendation of your mechanic then save the additional $400 and drive off happy.
BTW, my brother is a mechanic and a set of uppers runs about $800 to $1200 depending on the make and model of vehicle.
http://www.autozone.com/autozone/myzone/profile/membershipBenefits.jsp
Autozone.com has repair guides.
If this is a job you think you can do your self, tell the Grease Monkey to stuff it.
Most likely you’ll save yourself about $500 or so by doing it yourself. It’s the labor, not the parts, that runs up the bill.
This happened on my cousins brand new Saab once.
Lucky it was parked at the time.
He got the message real quick and got rid of the car.
OEM price of upper ball joints is $133.00 each, labor to install them is 1.1 hour each, depending on the labor rate in your area, the price the mechanic gave you is reasonable.
I’m not a mechanic but I would definitely replace the lower on the side that failed as it took some serious abuse when the top failed.
My Accord, which I bought new many moons ago, has 471,000 miles on its original engine and transmission, and is on its 4th set of lower ball joints. I commute everyday with it. I have never replaced the uppers. They just don’t take the same beating as the lower joints.
Even keeping in mind that your car is a GM product (never known for their durability), I doubt sincerely that your upper ball joints need to be replaced at 140k miles. I would replace only the lowers.
I own a repair shop and $900.00 is to much look else where.
I replaced everything last time...upper and lower also tie rod joints and bushings then got a wheel alignment. If one thing is worn out chances are other stuff is starting to fail. The tires will wear out a lot faster when any of these items get loose.
How much longer do you plan to keep it?
If you plan to dump it soon, do the minimum.
Otherwise, replace everything that is worn. If you do, you will probably notice the car will be a lot nicer to drive than it was, because it was degrading gradually so you didn’t really notice it happening.
The ball joints are $26/ea at Autozone (with a lifetime warranty).
Where are you? For $500, I will come replace all 4 of them. LOL.
Not an expert, but we just replaced the upper and lower ball joints in my husband’s 2005 Dodge Ram 2500 and total cost for the parts was $325 and I assume they would be a bit bigger than on a Bravada. Albeit, my husband did the labor himself. But $500 labor sounds a bit ridiculous, imo.
As for me, a 3-4000 pound machine carrying my family at 70 MPH is not something I scrimp on.
But if you've been driving roads that beat the ball joints out of your car in 150k miles, then those busted ball joints are just the tip of the iceberg floating in your money pit.
Your greater problem is that if your ball joints were sufficiently worn to the point of failure while operating, then it's very likely that everything else in your steering/front suspension is probably also pretty well beaten to shit.
At best, all that slop will preclude ever getting a decent alignment after replacing your ball joints. At worst, you'll be back in a month when the Pittman arm, a CV joint, or a tie rod goes. Well, actually at worst, you'll be wrecked somewhere along the side of the road when something or other fails "at speed". Those components are somewhat critical.
At any rate, it's either going to nickle and dime (actually $50 & $100) you to death, one piece at a time - or you're going to pay a bunch of money to fix it all at once. Either way, at 150k miles, it's probably throwing good money after bad.
I'm sure you can find plenty of "mechanics" who will gladly let you pay them to slap expensive new parts on a cheap old car. The trick is finding one honest enough to tell you when you need to just fold it up and replace the car.
Most American cars are not designed to last more than about 100k miles before they really start to eat more than they're worth. NAPA guys gotta eat too..... ;<{)
All just my opinion of course.....
Buy the parts and surf up some instructions, then replace them yourself. Save your money for food and ammo.