[downest]

I just finished working on someone's car, and I need to come up with a price for the work. The car is a 97 teg LS. The headgasket blew, and the owner took it to the Acura dealer who told him the head was cracked. He was going to swap in a GSR, but I told him to get the head checked out because I haven't really seen heads crack, the car still ran fine and seemed like a blown headgasket. So I helped him (did at least hald of the work) remove the head and strip it down, he took it in to a machine shop and it wasn't cracked, they said it wasn't even that warped. He had it resurfaced and got all the parts (new cam seals, headgasket, valve cover gasket etc). I reassembled the thing myself, set the timing etc, got it running fine again tonight. Total work today was 8-10 hours. I should add also that he doesn't really know what he's doing, and I basically walked him through the whole thing as far as where to go, what parts to order, etc.

He's going to pay me for the work, but I don't know what to ask for. I work on my close friends' cars a lot, but I rarely charge more than a six pack or dinner. I need the money now, and also he's not a close friend of mine. He also doesn't care too much what the price is, his dad is paying for it (he was ready to shell out for a GSR swap) and he hasn't had the car for a month so he's pretty excited to have it back.

 

[shadowcrx]

i would say 160-200, 20 bucks an hour, i charge my buddys the same

 

[Dodo]

Most shops will charge 70 dollars an hour so being nice and saying that you worked on it for 8 hours, thats $560. If you want to be nice i'd say go no lower then $400. Break it down, thats about 50 dollars an hour. That gives him a good break on labor cost but your still not getting hosed. Hope it helps.

 

[downest]

Well I also don't know how long a shop would take, maybe they would get it done in 5 or 6 hours, maybe less.

 

[cbp_crx]

idk, i guess i would charge around 200-250, mainly due to the fact that im not a shop, so no reason to charge a shop labor rate, but thats just me, no offense to the guy who posted that im just stating what i would charge

 

[shorte]

Well I also don't know how long a shop would take, maybe they would get it done in 5 or 6 hours, maybe less.

Maybe, but they probly would have kept the car for several days too.
I wouldn't rape him on it but don't screw yourself either,

I work on my close friends' cars a lot, but I rarely charge more than a six pack or dinner.

I still can't get away from doing that too, but it's easy to tell someone else not to do it anymore, lol

 

[Baker]

Since he is not that close of a friend, you walked him through it, did the work yourself and told him what parts he needed, $20-25/hr seems fair since you saved him lots of time, hassle and money!