£700 service, bit pricey?

[The Pole]

If you dont want to do it yourself go to motorcycle workshop on London Road in Derby I used them and they are pretty reasonable guys. Def cheaper than pidcocks.

[BigNinjaDave]

Hey mate I always use a place just down the A38 from Pidcocks

http://www.johncarrmotorcycles.com

I bought my ZX6R from them and always get it serviced there without any problems.

[Caz]

Something along the lines of:

oil and air filter changed
new sparkplugs
new back & front tires
chain sprocket

Then something I'm a bit sceptical about - they reckon the front and back brakes both have something up, and I know the previous owner got them all replaced in August last year. Said the front had some kind of oil contamination and the right pad would need changing.

What ya reckon? Sounds like a fair bit beyond a normal service and I know tires are expensive, but £700?

sounds way ott to me, but just to put it into perspective
new tyres £200 fitted (my sportec M3s are £230/pair fitted albeit a 180/55 rear)
chain and sprocket; aftermarket kit ca £80 plus an hours labour £130
my last service on the gixxer cost me £180, and that was oil and filter, plugs, and new air filter plus all the inspection they do (bike was still within warranty)

pads - will depend on what they put on, say £20/set thats £60 plus say 1 hr labour gives £110
so.....
£200 - Tyres
£130 - Chain and sprockets
£180 - plugs / fluids / filters
£110 - pads
all that lot adds up to £620 so you can see where they get £700 from, and from my experience £50/hr labour is a bit on the low side.

Id personally do most of the work myself, if you dont have a chain riveter you could do what i did and change your sprockets yourself, but get them to change your chain
plugs/fluids and filters are easy enough to do and you can probably do them for a fraction of the price
Tyres - you'll probably get a better deal for buying them from the same place that fits them.


I hate it when everything needs changing at once!

/Caz

[masterofinsanity]

if you dont have a riveter cut the chain off with an angle grinder and buy a new rivet link for about £4. thats what i've done.

[superman]

How can anyone justify 50 quid per hr does anyone else earn that cos im like no where near that its utter fluff. do the sums 50 per hr 8 hr per day 400 noted per day 5 days a week 2k a week i wish i earnt that as well no way are most them jobs worth 50 suid an hour i would find another garage where the mechanic dont live in oxford street. HA 8k a month

[Caz]

£50/hr from a garage - easy to justify.
You have to pay the mechanic who does the work and then they have their overheads - electricity/rent/admin staff etc
the guy who actually services the bike is probably lucky if he sees 25% of it (correct me if im wrong here cos i have no ide)
Ive been told that a certain car dealership in Northampton charge £85/hr labour

[superman]

Yea i can see where your comin from but these places make money from car / Bike sales which is a fair wack per car. but if the mechanic dont see 25% of it so what... if they didnt charge so much they would have more work its not like you have to go to uni an study for ten years is it. its just these main dealers bein greedy thats why i try not to use any dealers garage, if everyone done that they would have to lower prices. most ppl earn around 8 quid an hour its just daft.

[deviant]

agree with caz. it's not that hard to get up to that sort of figure, and the mechanic isn't seeing much of that.

my main issue with pidcocks is after a £100 job that turned into a £650 job because the inlet camshaft was lunched, I had to spend three weeks arguing with the feckers until they replaced the £3.50 fairing bracket that they took off but didn't put back on. (I rode it in without fairings). decided then that they weren't getting any more of my money - especially not for something I could do myself.

[RedexRobB]

My local dealers only charge £35 an hour, and they are a good place. More money never means better service or work.

[superman]

na i just dont think its justied. they charge that much cos they know the have u by the balls when u buy a new bike or car cos if you dont use that dealer the warranty is invalied they done it to me with me peugeot so i couldnt do anythin till the 3 yrs are up. so its 65 notes an hour. they easily make their overheads an the rest. i mean they worked on my car for its service december new sparks the usual service stuff then i had an air con service the car was in for 3 hours an it cost me £330 i was green.

[superman]

More money never means better service or work.

bang on if the garage by you can do it for 35 quid per hr and they must still make profit, what do u get for 75 notes haha.

[RedexRobB]

what do u get for 75 notes

two hours of labour

They are well good, they even chucked in a mirror once for free cos it was missing one and looked silly. How good is that?

[Xphyral]

How can anyone justify 50 quid per hr does anyone else earn that cos im like no where near that its utter fluff. do the sums 50 per hr 8 hr per day 400 noted per day 5 days a week 2k a week i wish i earnt that as well no way are most them jobs worth 50 suid an hour i would find another garage where the mechanic dont live in oxford street. HA 8k a month

i'm not a mechanic but i charge £40 an hour for my work, seeing nearly 8k a month would be cool but i dont ever see anywhere near that. the bonus is however that i wouldnt dream of working 5 days a week, 8 hours a day maybe 4 hours a day 3-4 days a week.

tattooing is so cool, not even i think its worth £40 an hour but my customers obviously do

[superman]

yea But tats are a set price aint they, the mechanic just wacks extra funds on, the pug garage by me was somethin like 300 notes for a set of lexus lights afew yrs ago, they said it takes 2 hours to fit an the lights were 150. for the lights i got the lights for a hundred notes from another shop an fitted them in ten minutes these dealership garages ay.

[Caz]

They charge these rates because they can. People are too incompetent and/or lazy to do the work themselves and a vehicle with a full dealer service history is worth more than one with an independent garage service history because there is this common misconception that because they have the dealer badge, they provide a superior service, AHAHAHAHHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

I always use a suzuki dealer when servicing my gixxer, but that's partly because they have always done a really good job with the servicing and I rate them as a garage.
With my car OTOH, I use independent garages and this is compounded by the level of incompetence I have recently experienced with dealers.

One thing that you do get with dealer based servicing that you do not get when you do it your self is warranty.
I had a set of shocks replaced on my old car to get it through MOT, a couple of months later my tyres were bald on the outer edges and the handling was terrible. I crawled under the car and found they were leaking. The garage replaced the shocks under warranty and replaced my tyres too as the bald outer edges was due to faulty shocks.

/caz