I'm wondering what the dealer (or good independent shop) would charge just to re-time the engine- just re-time it and give it back.
Probably wouldn't be that simple; they would want to do more and charge accordingly. Might be worth a couple phone calls though
The problems must all be timing related since it was essentially running ok before, just smoking a bit from your description
-Mark
I suspect you'd be "politely" told to eff off.
Had a service manager take a car in once. The work order read "charge rear left spark plug".
Umm, what?
Turns out the owner had tried to change the spark plugs on the car himself. It was one of those gm v8's where the rear plugs were all but impossible to change. I'm thinking it was a Camaro or Firebird, but I can't recall for certain. The tech who got the work order did the job, but we had a meeting in the break room that day at end of work.
Basically, we all told the desk guy (not a tech) if he did that again, we were all going to drag him out back and beat the life out of him.
Most shops really don't like taking work you've already tried and failed at. There's just no knowing what is wrong in there.
When they do take it, it's very often double time charges to do the work. At a minimum, owner "worked on" cars were charged straight time, not the Mitchel manual. And gawd help you if you were being charged straight time. Coffe breaks, smoke breaks, whatever....the clock was running at 80 bucks an hour (this was a while ago, it's something like 100-150 and hour now I think) and you were footing the bill....
IOW, the charges basically meant:
Go the eff away with your effed up car!
