2008 Hyundai Elantra Mechanic reviews

ROCKETMAN007

MEMBER
2008 HYUNDAI ELANTRA

As I mentioned before I took my car back to the dealership and they did the timing belt replacement. That cost me $500ish. My friend that I work with said that his mechanic would have charged a lot less for the same job. But I am wondering how to tell which mechanics are best suited, honest, have their paperwork and insurance in order, etc? My mechanic said he could have done the timing belt for me, but doesn't typically do longer procedures for the sake of having time for other customers. I would like to find a secondary mechanic for those longer jobs. How do you tell the good from the bad? Particularly when doing a timing belt wrong could be very disastrous?

2 Replies

WRENCHTECH

MECHANIC
20,757 POSTS

The timing belt time is about three hours excluding changing the water pump at the same time which is recommended. At an hourly rate around the average of $90, That's $270 in labor. The parts to do this job correctly can easily run over $200 so all things considered, I don't think the price was high at all and any of these shops that are claiming they could have done it a lot cheaper are probably just the kind of shop you want to stay away from. If they have the knowledge, overhead and equipment needed to do this right that can't work that cheap.

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Saturday, June 6th, 2015 AT 2:08 PM

ED-WEEZY21

MECHANIC
248 POSTS

I, myself, work at a Hyundai dealership Gary Rome Hyundai. We charge about $425 for parts and labor. Book time is 3 hours but with experience, I can cut that time down to around an hour on these elantras. We typically don't replace the water pump on 4 cylinder hyundais because the timing belt isn't run off of the water pump. The 6 cylinder engines are though. To be honest, this is one of the easiest timing belts I've ever done on any car so for future reference, your friend can most likely do it for you with no problems.

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Saturday, June 6th, 2015 AT 5:51 PM