Timing Cover Gasket Leak

just curious what this means. The tech gets paid 35% less when working on warranty items? I would have figured they get an hourly rate regardless of what type of work they perform.

 

Without using too many trigger phrases, that's not how it works in most dealerships.
Nealy all dealer techs get paid more or less by how much work they crank out, which benefits everyone but the customer, usually.

The dealer will usually have an hourly shop rate, which can be well over $150 an hour with a half-hour minimum.
There are various repair guides that will estimate the number of hours for each type of car repair based on the job in question and there is the value that the dealership will be paid by the factory warranty repair.
All of these are very different things.

In the internet age, it might be easy to get an hourly estimate for...say, a timing chain cover gasket replacement.
I saw one value of 15 hours, which multiplied by a shop hourly rate of $150.00 per hour would be $2250.
Presuming a gasket kit costs less than $100 - a DANGEROUS presumption to make!!, this would result in a bill for something in the $2500 neighborhood.
This is a very expensive neighborhood for a oil "leak" that may or may not still be actively leaking, seeping, weeping, wicking, or oozing from a gasket.

So....
Let's say that a really good mechanic can replace it in one 10 hour day...skipping lunch and peeing in a Gatorade bottle.
Let's say that the factory will only reimburse the dealer for 8 hours...or 12.
The mechanic's paycheck will usually be a function of how many billable hours of work that they perform on a car, so his or her paycheck will vary by how many repairs that they can crank out over a pay period....AND the shop manager has a pretty good incentive to give the "good" jobs to the "good" techs and assign the lesser desirable repairs (like.........maybe a warranty repair for a timing chain cover gasket replacement) to the less favored techs.
This "lessor favored" tech might be the one that gets stuck with taking an engine ALL THE WAY apart, installing a $5 gasket, and putting it ALL THE WAY back together for a warranty repair that the "favored tech" doesn't want to be bothered with. Correctly...with no left over parts, and all of the bolts properly torqued to specs and all of the fasteners replaced.

Even the 'Ace' mechanic is working against a clock that will reward him or her for doing things FAST much more than doing things correctly.

The shop makes all of the money that they can squeeze out of the customer, or the factory, or sometimes both, to repair (or maintain) the car.
Without EVEN getting into the world of false repairs, double billing the customer AND the factory, and selling the customer unnecessary maintenance, the system is weighted heavily against the car owner.

See Also:
Law office billing.
Government Contract work
Road construction.
...other reputable industries with a good reputation for honesty and integrity.


Buying a box of Quisp cereal is easy-peasy!
You can pay Amazon $9 and it will be on your door step the day after tomorrow.
You can go down to the Pig, or Wally and pay more or less the same thing for the same 8.5 oz. box that was probably closer to 12oz. in the 1960's, but hey....if you know what Quisp cereal is then you're probably old enough to be laying off the extra carbs and sugar anyway - right?

It's different with cars and car repairs.

Caveat Emptor.

 

ETC nailed it. Mechanics are almost always paid by the billable work they produce. In summary, mechanics are paid on commission; an industry-standard labor guide provides labor times for a job and the reimbursement rate for warranty work is often 1/3 less. Sometimes more.

 

wow, thanks for that explanation. i certainly did not know this. I had always assumed it was just an hourly job. yeah that does kinda suck on the warranty work then. So then I bet they /really/ hate oil changes then.

 

Usually .3 hr for oil changes and another .2 for the tire rotation.

 

They will often have an employee that specifically does things like oil changes and tire rotations, car detailing, PDIs, and driving the car down the road to get your first fill-up, etc.
It depends on the dealer and the shop.

Sometimes a for-real SAE certified, gen-u-wine factory trained tech will be the one that dumps the bulk-oil into your engine and pretends to change the filter.....but usually it's not their best tech.

When I change the oil in my cars, it ALWAYS takes longer than .3 hours.
Part of this is because I'm not an SAE certified, gen-u-wine factory trained tech.
Part of this is because I don't have a shop.
MOST of this is because it's MY car, and I want to make sure that it's done RIGHT.

Despite all of my rants against SAE certified, gen-u-wine factory trained techs, most of them are pretty good folks, more or less.
They just work for a system without enough guardrails that incentivizes short cuts and dishonesty.

However (comma!) THEIR family members do not ride in cars that I have work done on.
MY family does.

 

Plus, the mechanics provide their own tools and boxes. That's typically a few thousand $$ just to get started.

 

Yeah, I do my own oil changes as well. I have the QuickJack lift system which speeds up the process. From start to finish, if I don't have to go to the other garage to get the tools, I can do the oil and tire rotation in about 45 min and that includes moving the jacks into place.

I just posted in another thread my oil dispensing station. Yellow is toyota 0w-20, blue is ford 5w-30.

 

. This I did know, and how crazy expensive it can get when start talking about snap-on or matco.

 

$50-$100K is not uncommon at all.

 

I spent about a month looking at different lift systems. I almost went with the MaxJax portable lift...but it really isn't all that "portable", storing off to the side took up a heck of a lot more space, and setup was about 10x longer to move and bolt into the floor. Plus it limits accessibility to the vehicle when in use. The benefit of the maxjax is that it raises 4'. The quickjack stores nicely in my garage and takes like 5 min to setup and have the car lifted. I did mount the motor to the wall to keep it out of the way, but can easily be removed and put in the truck to take to a different location. I ended up getting the 7500lb model so i can work on all the cars in the family. Like when my sister came to visit, the QJ lifted her FJ cruiser easily and made short work for her oil change.

 

$$$ Ouch. I think I'll stick with four jackstands and a quick lift jack, or the ramps for oil changes.

 

That's worked for me so far. Plus a big block of wood to keep me company, something thicker than me. And a cell phone.

 

I saw the the timing chain tensioner (TCT) "seep" on a 2010, which had the timing chain gasket reworked/redone. In other words, Toyota diagnosed timing chain cover leak, the work was done to remove and re-seal the gasket with new FIPG. And then some miles later the oil tensioner was "seeping" slightly. In my case, I purchase and installed a new TCT and gasket for that device only. the TCT gasket is metal - stupid choice for a gasket in my opinion, but I'm not an automotive engineer. What I discovered was that the two bolts holding the TCT in place were very loose upon removal for the install of the new TCT. I suspect the tech who did the timing chain cover gasket didn't properly torque them down, or through normal heating/cooling cycles of engine, the bolts become loose. In my case, since i had the new gasket and TCT parts, I just put the new one on. but if i has to do it over again, i might have just re-torqued the old TCT down to the proper spec + maybe 1 or 2 pounds to make it a bit tighter. And then wiped the area down and watched it.

Both the timing chain cover and TCT oil "seepage" are not a big problem in my opinion, even though they are annoying. the oil isn't "leaking", but rather smudging at points along the seals or gasket. If you monitor it and wipe down with a rag, you should be fine.

 

Maybe a thin coat of form-in-place gasket on the tensioner gasket would help?

 

Never heard of an "oil tensioner". Do you mean the timing chain tensioner???

 

sorry, typed the wrong thing - too tired and too much work last week!
I have typo-ed that part name before. its a timing chain tensioner (TCT), which seeps oil. I just corrected it.

 

No problem. Kinda figures that's what you meant.....
A little gasket sealer on the tensioner and timing cover, with the seal, will solve
any leak that may happen....

And seapage isn't a problem, like you said. 301,000 miles on mile when I removed it,
it wasn't leaking.

I honestly think it's the pressure switch that leaks. It's common for every car.
Oil will blow everywhere! And then possibly the tensioner gasket.

 

here are some pics i dug up from past work. notice there is no o-ring type gasket on the TCT itself. the metal gasket mates the TCT to the engine block. i have dug up another pic with an o-ring gasket - this pic is from a Toyota corolla engine. Toyota does it two ways and they both kind of "seep" over the long haul. probably removing the metal gasket plate and using some FIPG which is rated for that part is the best option.