[mlin]

Hi,

I am pretty new here. Great forum!

You guys were ripped off pretty badly. Don't trust the mechanics, especially from a dealership. Because most of them are greedy and want your money bad, it's very unlikely they will tell you the truth. Borrow a Chilton repair manual from the library and do some study first. This way, even you can't do the repair yourself, you know what it probably takes to get fixed.

My 88 Camry got a serious problem couple months ago and died on highway. It turned out that the alternator was bad. The dealer wanted $300 for the parts and $150 for labor, $450 total, plus a long list of stuff they want to replace, sum up to be over $3500. For a 16 years old car, they probably want to replace everything.

My dad stopped by over the weekend and called AAA to tow the car home from the dealership. He took off the alternator (3 bolts), took off the back cover (couple bolts), and pointed to me that the 2 brushes were worn out. He bought the brushes from a local hardware store (yes, hardware store, not auto parts store) and replaced them, put the alternator back and, like a magic, it worked again !!! The car has been running without any problem since and it's over 8000 miles already. How much for the brushes? $3.00 a pair!!! Can you believe it!!! And it took him about 5 minutes to get the alternator off the car, another 5 minutes to dis-assemble it, 15 minutes to put everything back and install it back to the car. Without repairing, it probably takes someone less than 10 minutes to replace it and the dealership ask for $150 !!!! That's even more rewarding than robbing a bank. He told me to check the repair manual first before asking anyone to do a repair and always ask for 2nd opinion.

The leak should be from a seal. I don't believe there is any seal that can't be replaced, how did they put it in then? It's just that a seal probably will make them only $2.00 profit, and a new pump can make them $75 or more. Of course they want to do the latter.

Just my 2 cents. Good luck with your repair.