22 hours labour for???

[V8Zig]

Hi guys.
Recently took my 2006 boxster S into a porsche specialist in spain for a water pump, new ARB drop links and a CV boot. Total labour hour charged 22!! They are claiming 16 hours on the arb drop links?? Am I missing something? Has anyone here actually done this job? I have done it on other cars and can't understand this.. I am collecting the car tomorrow and want to question this but would like a bit more info thats not chat gpt

[and31]

When I changed all the suspension on my 987 cayman S the first drop link took me about 3 hrs, bd of a job involving lots of heat and very large stilsons! But by the time I’d got to the forth droplink I’d honed my technique and it took me about 25 minutes…
I can’t see how a garage can charge you four hrs per corner!!

[churchie2856]

Here's what's involved.

Front: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdhrmv7UwLY
Rear: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsFB34OxnXg

Your four must have been a terrible state... rusted, set in concrete and then fibreglassed over.

[Slippydiff]

The front anti roll bar fixing also doubled up as the pinch bolt for the front struts. Bolt is steel, front upright the strut drops into is aluminium. You get galvanic corrosion between the two dissimilar metals and the stud ends up welded in the upright.
Not helped by the hexagonal flange you'd normally try and turn to free the stud off, being the wrong side of the ball (just cut it off with angle grinder) but also being a fairly shallow section hexagon ...

We found best way to get the ARB bolt stud out was to get the upright and strut off the car, get it in a vice, and get some serious heat into the upright and bolt, and then get a properly powerful rattle gun on the ball joint free hex head.
Once it breaks loose, hose penetrating oil on it and keep it spinning whilst hammering it out from the other end.

It's a barrel of laughs ...

[housemouse]

Seems pretty OTT, but then pretty OTT charges are the norm these days. My most recent oil change on a mainstream Porsche was £250 plus VAT. And they charged extra to dispose of the old oil.

Stick it on lift, whip the drain plug out, drop and replace the filter, blah, blah. It would be impossible to generate more than 30 minutes of labour and that's being very, very, very generous. They will also be paying far, far less than usual retail for the crappy Mobil 1 0W40. £50 of oil to them, tops, and again, that's being very generous.

If they're doing other jobs that require the car to sit on the ramp anyway, you can't charge specifically for that. It's all a farce.

Happened to use a Porsche specialist oop North for a very specific job at the end of last year. Got an oil change while it was in. £125 plus VAT. Oh well.

[Milkyway]

Reminiscent of some Bangers & Cash episodes.

[Filibuster]

It took my mechanic 22 hrs last year to change the following on my 2005 997 C2:

• waterpump
• thermostat
• over the engine coolant pipes
• replace oil and filter
• replace gearbox oil
• fit two new tyres

While a lot of labour, I know how difficult especially the coolant pipes were to get fitted.

[maz8062]

Harry Enfield used to feature a sketch called “I saw you coming.” 22 hrs for drop links is daylight robbery in my view. If you’d known it would have taken that long it would have made more sense to change control arms, top mounts etc. perhaps drop the whole assembly including the shocks and work through it that way.

Having said that, the heady mix of steel and aluminium used for the suspension components is the reason it takes so long.

[maz8062]

Harry Enfield used to feature a sketch called “I saw you coming.” 22 hrs for drop links is daylight robbery in my view. If you’d known it would have taken that long it would have made more sense to change control arms, top mounts etc. perhaps drop the whole assembly including the shocks and work through it that way.

Having said that, the heady mix of steel and aluminium used for the suspension components is the reason it takes so long.

[Ed.Neumann]

My nearside drop link took me nearly 8 hours to get out. In the end I removed the wheel carrier and drilled the thing out, but took me hours.

The offside was not as bad, but still took around 3 hours to get it out.


I bought an induction heater when I had to do my other one, and not sure if it was the amount of heat or whether it was just not as corroded in, but it cracked and came out pretty easily.

[TROOPER88]

The drop-links are not normally an issue tbh once you have the correct technique and tools.

You say you also had CV boots done; this can take a bit of time due to the LCA bolts being seized.

I would estimate that this job in the workshop would take 6-8 hours.

That is how I would price it anyway.

Paul