[s-cars] Wheel Bearing replacement labor question

[Manuel Sanchez]

Fellow S-heads,

All this wheel bearing talk seems timely.

Questions are;
a shop is quoting me 2 hours of labor total to press out my 2 front  
wheel bearings and replace with new ones. I have already removed the  
strut housing from the car and given them to the shop, so my  
inexperienced thinking was that I've done a good part of the labor  
for them. Again my inexperienced thinking hopes that all they have to  
do is carry the housing to the press and press them out and press the  
new ones in, which to me seems like it should take less than an hour  
per housing.

I have been told that there is "set-up" time because the housings are  
an "unusual shape", that and the fact that my old races "were really  
seized in the housing" and so they had to use the "big hydraulic press".

Another bit of service that was done was the replacement of the big  
giant strut cartridge retaining nuts. This labor is also said to have  
taken almost 2 hours to do both. The springs were not under load. To  
my untrained mind this also seem like a really long time, 1 hour per  
nut.

Are these reasonable labor charges based on the fact that I had  
delivered the strut housings out of the car? Would it have been  
easier to remove and reinstall the front bearings if it was all still  
installed on the car?

Thanks.

Manny
95.5 urS6 Avant (still strut-less)