A while back, I hit bad pothole that damaged a tire and I knew that I needed an alignment. The car also has an oil leak and was parked for a while (my second car), so I waited to swap the winter wheels and tires for all-seasons in the garage. During that process, I noticed the lower control arm bushings were shot so there was no point in getting the alignment taken care of until the bushings were repaired. I dropped it at Firestone near me to fix the oil leak since that was the most pressing issue on the car, and then had them quote the bushings - they wanted to replace the control arms, with bushings and ball joints at $374 per side in parts, and $135 per side in labor - or a total of $1,018. Well, I looked around online and found that I could buy the same control arm, bushing and ball-joint parts as a pair for BOTH sides for anywhere from $145-$185 (they wanted $750 for the same parts!).
I called Subie Doctor next, and they quoted me about $50-100 cheaper for the entire job.
Then I remembered seeing Subarus parked outside Clarkson's whenever I visited family that live in the Conifer area and gave them a call.
Mike listened to my needs and quoted $130 per side to replace the control arm bushings that I had already identified as needing a fix, or, he said, if I wanted to buy the Control Arm, Bushing, and Ball Joint assemblies I'd found online, they'd install my purchased parts for $90 labor for both sides!
I ended up deciding to just have them replace the bushings so I called back to schedule an appointment and talked to Sung. I asked them to replace the passenger side and inspect the driver's side and let me know if it needed it - then give me a call and let me know how it looked. They called me up, said I should replace both sides, and notified me they found one of the front swaybar links needed to be replaced - they quoted another twenty-some bucks for the part, and I'm pretty sure they didn't even add any extra labor.
Another hour or so later and they called back saying the car was ready whenever I could come back to get it.
I couldn't be happier with the service they provided. It was honest, no-nonsense and courteous every interaction. I went from a quote of more than $1,000 to a quarter of that and all I had to do was drive 20 miles up the hill - I'll take that deal any time.
To Mike and Sung - Thank you. I sure wish I'd called you about that oil leak in the first place - probably would have saved me another $100, but now I know! read more