NAPA guide for labour hours.

Is anyone familiar with NAPA auto parts guidelines for time required to service a car?

For many years, the industry guidelines for servicing a car or components have tended to be pretty accurate. In my experience, usually a good mechanic would actually require the time stated in the book to actually do the work. An amateur like me usually would take much longer.

My local mechanic (who is generally 90% honest) quoted me 6 hours labour (at $70/hr) to change the heater core in my 1997 Cadillac Deville. He showed me the NAPA website, to which he subscribes which listed all Deville of that body style (94-99 I think), at 6 to 6.5 hours, depending on if it had a console.

As I have done about 12 heater cores in my life, I did the work myself...... in one hour, based on simple instructions I pulled off the net.

Now I like to think my skills are good, but not that good. Another Cadillac forum consistently reported that most participants can easily do this job within 2 hours, first time.

So........ why did NAPA quote 5 more hours for a mechanic to do the same work? Was this an isolated typo for this job, or does NAPA pad all their hours so mechanics can fleece the public by quoting their rates?

Thoughts? Opinions?

Any job like this is tough especially for a 1sr time event, my Mitchell time guide shows 3 hours, remember this is for an experienced tech, no problems like hoses that won't come off and such.

alldata says 6.4 hours. The instructions it list are pathetically vague. Nor does it show a diagram of whats involved.

Can't say I've done one on a deville, so I can't comment.

Trust me, time books can be horribly wrong in both directions. I think too often they fudge the times by basing the times off of the previous year/model without verifying they are identical