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| - I have had mixed results with this Pep-Boys store. Over the past four or five years, I've brought at least 6 different cars to them. They have installed and balanced tires that I purchased through Tire-Rack for one of my BMWs and did a good job. They've also been good with hoses and belts and pretty good with brakes. But there have been management and staff changes. The guy who knows Bosch ABS systems is long gone. I keep forgetting why I don't use them anymore and bring a car back every once in awhile. Most recently, I brought my Dodge truck in to get aligned. My regular mechanic does not have a wheel alignment rig and said it might need a ball joint so I was expecting that. (Ball joints typically cost less than $50 and are usually about $100-150 to install.) But this time, the guys here at Pep Boys ran the "what you need" bill up to incredible numbers and the mechanic working on my car took me for an even bigger fool than I sometimes am. He started by lifting the truck and telling me that my steering rack unit was leaking and needed to be replaced. (I had just had the oil changed elsewhere and had to point out that it was clearly oil from the filter change that had dripped on the rack, not power steering fluid.) Oh. Then he told me that both lower ball joints needed to be replaced and that he was going to have to BLOWTORCH one of them to get it out. Really??!! Blowtorch the suspension of a car? This isn't a "heat the nut to loosen it" thing. The tool to use if you can't loosen a nut and use a ball-joint separator is called a die grinder. And it is often cheaper and less labor intensive to just buy new wishbones than it is to replace the ball joints and bushings. The estimate they provided, not including the $600 steering rack I clearly didn't need), was nearly $1500! From what I can tell, that was ONLY to replace the lower ball joints and sway bar bushings. The total was $600 for parts and $650 for labor and another $100 for a labor warranty that by all accounts should have been included. I politely asked for the truck back and took it back over to my regular mechanic. He ran a quick quote. He can replace the upper and lower control arms (wishbones), the tie rods and the sway bar bushings using quality Moog parts AND install new front shocks for $500 in parts and $300 in labor, $800 plus tax. This would replace every moving part except the springs and give me a completely new front suspension. My mechanic was quick to point out that I didn't NEED all of this, but that if I wanted to replace these parts, it would be much cheaper to do it all at once while he was in there and things were apart. He then told me that the only thing I NEED in order to get the front end aligned is one new ball joint. $35 for the part and $125 for the labor. So this time, Pep boys managed to turn my front end alignment ($85) and a ball joint replacement ($150-200) into a $1500 estimate. Maybe next time I'll remember to read my review before returning to this Pep-Boys store.
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