[V8] I'm with Scott

[Jason Wilkerson]

I do all my own work and I do some work on the side.  I recently had a customers v8 here and I re-did every seal in the motor and trans - except for the head gaskets.  I didn't realize they were leaking because I thought all the other gaskets were causing the puddles - bad assumption.  I had to eat over 13hrs labor because I felt I should have made the customer replace them while I had it apart.  I didn't make him pay for all the 'double work' because it was the right thing to do - but - I won't make that mistake again!  Because of that my own personal a8 is getting head gaskets now while I have it out to put a 6spd in it.  It just isn't worth the possible headache to me anymore over a couple bucks or even a couple hundred.  To each his own.
 

________________________________
 From: Mike Arman <Armanmik at earthlink.net>
To: v8 at audifans.com 
Sent: Friday, August 30, 2013 3:24 PM
Subject: [V8] I'm with Scott
  



I'm with Scott on this. I do my own work for two reasons, first, I enjoy it (somewhat), and second, 
I don't like to pay for something I can do myself.


The first V-8 timing belt I did was in 2007, in the middle of the summer, outside. I could do an I-5 
belt in about 2.5 hours from open hood to wash hands, and not work tremendously hard to do that. The 
V8 took me 14 hours of sweating in the sun over four days.

Admittedly, that was the first one, and I am sure I could beat that time now considering I have a 
decent place to work, have sourced all the tools, and so on.

Let me put it this way - there is NO WAY I would do this without changing ALL the recommended parts 
involved because I would *NOT* want to have to do it again for a $30 or $50 or even a $100 part 
which I "figgered" was going to last another 60K miles and didn't.

Make no mistake, this is a fairly significant job, and while it is neat to say "Yeah, I did it 
myself" it is not neat to say "I had to go in and do it again twice because I didn't change part X 
for $10 the first or second time."

Do it right or don't do it - even if you are doing it for fun, what's your time worth?

Best Regards,

Mike Arman
90V8Q, still needs a buyer!
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