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Air Conditioning Compressor 1650.00!

3K views 60 replies 11 participants last post by  scott9050 
#1 ·
An independent repair shop, Christian Brothers Automotive quoted me 1669.00 plus tax for New Compressor, aluminum filter drier with pad mount, expansion valve, compressor oil and recharging the system. Any thoughts on this? Seems high.
 
#56 ·
Well, SMP builds maybe 40% of it's parts at one of their many manufacturing facilities around the world, assembles products bought from other countries and buys the other 60% from China. I am familiar with this company as I helped design and sell an automated machine to manufacture electric motors some years...that machine went to their Mexican manufacturing facility.
Just so you understand and know for future reference is that any US manufacture can by parts from a country like China and as long as the US company puts 35% "manufacturing content" into the product they can say it's made in the USofA. By that I mean mostly labor in assembling or maybe some final machine work and or packaging...then they can label and sell the products as "Made in the USA".
I am very familiar with some of their brands like BWD, Blue Streak, TechSmart, Intermotor and Factory Air. Some of the more common brands I'm sure you will recognize are; Duralast, Import Direct, NAPA Belden, NAPA Echlin, NAPA Temp and Master Pro. The Master Pro brand I do have first hand knowledge of and it is a brand that is brought back for warranty...quite often.
So, as Rapinator said...I wish you good luck.
 
#57 · (Edited)
Well, SMP builds maybe 40% of it's parts at one of their many manufacturing facilities around the world, assembles products bought from other countries and buys the other 60% from China. I am familiar with this company as I helped design and sell an automated machine to manufacture electric motors some years...that machine went to their Mexican manufacturing facility.
its no different than buying the OEM part that failed on the car. Where do you think Ford gets "OEM QUALITY" compressors that suck? What would be dumb is returning to my own vomit and buying a Ford OEM compressor to replace one that failed already. Any car part ia subject to failure, that's the world we live in. This notion that buying the part and paying double from a mechanic who has the local parts store bring them whatever is available somehow miraculously fixes this problem is ridiculous. It's a gimmick and stereotype some shops use to price gouge. I bought a cheap alternator one time on Amazon, first one failed, second one was fine. OEM parts fail all the time which is why the shop has a job. The compressors are not built in China, it says it.right on their website. They build other parts there besides compressors.

My girlfriend has had to have her wheel bearing replaced under parts and labor warranty from the body shop, I'm sure they don't put cheap crap on there o1f they are going to have to fix it again for free, but the part failed.
 
#60 · (Edited)
On my ole 1986 5.0 liter Fox body, took the car to a top A/C shop in the area and they quoted $1200 back in 1995, said the evaporator was bad. So I bought a bunch of A/C repair manuals, got a high vacuum pump, bought the gauges and leak test meter and adapters, and got the canister of R-134 from Costco. It helped a local A/C shop gave me free advice, so I learned how to do everything myself. All the tools and parts cost maybe $900. When I took the evaporator out, there was nothing wrong with it!

And yeah, taking the dash out was not fun. I tend to procrastinate; same deal with putting the damn dash back in. Drove the car for 3 months without a dash.

I did things right, when I converted from R-22 to R-134. Made sure I got the correct rubber O-rings and I flushed the entire system out. The money you save can be put into the tools, and if you know what you are doing, the only right way is to do it yourself.
 
#61 ·
Motorcraft compressor, condenser and accumulator on Rock auto for $495.49 after 5% discount. Best thing to do is to find a Ford tech that does side work. I have one that works for $50 an hour, only cost me $300 labor to replace the clutch and flywheel.
 
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