Yaaay, it's ready. Wait, how much??!?!!

I'm kicking myself very hard right now for not buying the turnkey 88 4runner with dual tcases, lockers, SAS, 37s, and the immaculate paint and interior and lots of other goodies. Sure, it wasn't a turbo, but I'd have spent less than I have on this truck and a motor, and this truck still needs a tranny soon, and, except for the hotter motor, is still bone stock.

Last time I checked, "$2400 drive in, drive out" usually meant you drove it in, they did the work, you wrote a check for $2400 plus some tax, maybe some shop supplies (I hate when they're not allocated in the estimate), and you took your truck home with a new motor.

However, I found out over the last couple of weeks that some key items were not included in this original drive-in/out estimate. Like a timing chain. Or an oil pump. Just before the motor is going to go back together is a hard time to find this out, since I'd already put together a budget.

Honestly, I'm choking on the price at the moment. It's more than double the $2400, when I expected we were going to add maybe another $1400-1600 tops! including all the extras I had asked for. I'll post the invoice later, first I want to go over it since the last written estimate I had listed some machine work that they weren't able to explain at the time.


Let me call out very clearly that I don't think they did anything it didn't need, so that's not my concern.

Now, granted, I had them add some stuff - Total Chaos motor mounts, rebuild my turbo, cat-back exhaust, etc. - but those were factored in extra on my end, obviously not part of the $2400.

On top of that, it ended up needing a head, and some other parts. However, from when *I* worked on cars, I expect that kind of interaction to go like this:

• Shop: Hi Eric, it's James at the Truck Shop. Your 4runner's needs XYZ, which will add $X to your cost, includes blah, blah, blah, bringing your total price to $Y. Is that OK?
• Eric: Thanks for the call! I was prepared that it might need XYZ. question, question... What was the new total for the engine again? OK, go for it, thanks!

This gets repeated any time there's any significant change to the bottom line. During a rebuild, that might occur 2-3 times depending on how many surprises there are.

Well, we're now at the end, and no use crying over spilled milk, especially since I helped spill some of it by not pushing very hard for am updated bottom line price. While I had asked several times, I only got one - which summarily freaked me out since the price had more than doubled. I thought we had fixed it. I can't imagine what my total price would be if we hadn't had that conversation.

I'll post the invoice after I pick it up and provide more details on how I think it ended up here, and ideas on how to avoid this kind of nasty surprise right before Christmas when $$ is already tight.
And the money flow is not over yet. I'm not told it still needs to be broken in, then a cat installed, then smogged. I had asked for it to be smogged before I picked it up and was told "No problem." and watched him add a note to my file.

It seems the shop knows what they're doing technically, and they do come highly recommended, so I'm going to reserve overall judgement for now, but the customer-interaction model is leaving me feeling extremely frustrated and disappointed.

But I am skeert to go back to them for the next set of planned mods (Supra AFM, intercooler, turn up the boost, etc.) if this is the interaction I should expect...

All I have to say is this motor better be the cat's meow, not burn oil, reliable, long lasting, grumble, grumble...