Need advice on what the dealership told me

[LiveFromHeaven]

It's too cold this week in MN to work on my brothers 93' cylinder camry, so we towed it to the dealership to have the ignition coil changed. They changed the coil for 345$, but told me that the plugs and wires were fouled with oil and that they wanted to re-do the valve seals to keep other parts from wearing out. (another 250$) Am I getting played here? Is this a vital repair that I should have them do while it's still in the shop?

Thanks for any advice!

[hooRAH]

Well does the car run now? If it does, then the plugs aren't 100% necessary. Sure the valve stem seals going bad will cause the car to burn a bit of oil and foul the plugs a bit, but its not an absolute necessity to replace them immediately.

[Mike Gerber]

$345 to replace just the coil is outrageous. Did they replace the whole distributor and not just the coil?

In addition, when asking questions about what a car needs, it's best to give some more details. How many miles are on the car? Do you know anythings about the maintainence history of the car? As far as the valve seals; is the car using any oil? If so, how much oil? Also, you can probably do the plugs and wires yourself (if needed) and save some money there.

Mike

[LiveFromHeaven]

Yea the car runs fine (so the dealership says. Haven't seen it yet, but it ran great before the coil went out) It just went over the 200k mile mark and I always knew it burned a little oil. I guess I'll tell the dealership to f-off. Anybody think otherwise?

[LiveFromHeaven]

Originally Posted by Mike Gerber

$345 to replace just the coil is outrageous. Did they replace the whole distributor and not just the coil?

In addition, when asking questions about what a car needs, it's best to give some more details. How many miles are on the car? Do you know anythings about the maintainence history of the car? As far as the valve seals; is the car using any oil? If so, how much oil? Also, you can probably do the plugs and wires yourself (if needed) and save some money there.

Mike

Yea, I know, I'm going to have to talk to them about the labor cost. I know the coil and gasket was only about 100$, 250$ in labor is bogus - no way it took them 2 or 3 hours to do. I think my brother puts in a quart of oil every 1,000 miles or so but I'll have to ask him to make sure. We just did the plugs and wires about 18 months ago so I do sort of get the feeling I'm being anal-ized.

[Mike Gerber]

"We just did the plugs and wires about 18 months ago so I do sort of get the feeling I'm being anal-ized."

I have to agree. You put it rather nicely.

The plugs need to be changed every 60,000 miles with platinum plugs. If your brother hadn't reached that point/mileage I would just forget about them and the wires too, unless you notice some deterioration in performance. As an FYI, problems with the plug wires will usually show up in wet/damp weather. If the engine runs fine in wet/damp conditions, the plug wires are probably fine.

Double check on the oil consumption before even thinking about valve seals. 1 quart every 1000 miles isn't too bad and is still a lot cheaper than valve seals; especially form this dealer.

Mike