Troy ThibodeauxI decided to just get the oil change and kick the can down the road and deal with the noise some other time. Seems like pretty smart thinking, right?
After I had the oil changed I was talking to the manager, Marvin, who I have dealt with for many years with all our family's cars. I told him about the noise, and said I might be bringing it back some times soon to address it. He said, I should just leave it now and they could take care of it. He said it would probably be an hour, and about $200. He said it could be something serious that would take more time and money, but he seems pretty confident in what he thought it was.
45 minutes later and $162 later, my car was fixed. The noise was gone. Now that's service. No extra fee, no BS, just knocked it out.
Yea, $162 is not a trivial amount, but it could have been any number of expensive parts. I do realize (now) that I can buy an idler pulley from Amazon for $20. Could I have replaced this part myself? Maybe I could. I have done work on my car for years with varying degrees of success. But, I had no idea what was making the noise. I have replaced the serpentine belt, the tensioner, and have removed the alternator before, but do I just start replacing parts? That $115 labor fee probably included them checking all the parts connected to the belt. Also, I did research online and descriptions of similar noises had a big list of possible sources.... transmission, breaks, water pump, alternator, etc. So, I was not confident in just taking a chance by buying a part and replacing it, and hoping for the best.
So, I feel good about the money I spent. On top of the issues of me trying to fix it myself I mentioned, the time for me to work on it would be huge. I would have spent hours finding the parts locally and hopefully having the right tools.
Now, I have time to enjoy the rest of my day not working on my car.
Success!
