Electrical problems $4K to fix??

I can't imagine either but depends on what they're tackling and how they're going about it and if you see the fuse box the under hood unit you won't forget it. The fuse box is a bunch of outlets if you flip it over . So maybe just a branch circuit needs attention. The whole box that will be a splicing debacle

 

This is the gen 3 Prius forum, so I'm assuming that's what the car is.

The fuse box has a few replaceable modules in it, but for the most part it is an integral part of the Engine Room Main Wire Harness with dozens of wires in the harness directly crimped into it. As Tombukt2 said, you're not likely to find anyone sane proposing to replace just the box and splice everything.

The link I gave above is just for an example of the pricing of an Engine Room Main wire harness. The harness has many variants depending on the year and exact trim of the car, so it's crucial to do a search by VIN or by the year and trim and be sure to get the right part number. Anyway, the prices ought to be roughly similar.

Keep in mind that the link gives only the price for the part. I would expect also several hours of labor, maybe even 10 to 15 wouldn't be outlandish. That harness runs all through the engine bay and there's all kinds of stuff getting in the way.

 

Was there a reverse-connected jump start? Rodent damage? Corrosion due to salt? Flood? Knowing the cause might help responders.

 

In general when you have damaged wires and you're a legit mechanic who people can trust and afford you repair those wires for next to nothing by splicing them back together. But if you're a Toyota Stealership and you have even just one damaged wire they'll start talking crazy talk about how its not safe to repair and you need to replace the entire wiring harness, which if the car was under warranty and you didn't have to pay would be fine, but ridiculous if you just need an old car to function again.

 

I watch South Main Auto, (YouTube mechanic located in small town, up-State New York). A LOT of his work is tracking down electrical issues, often exacerbated by road salt.

He makes no bones about it: many times it's just a bit of soldering or crimping, seal and wrap. But the journey to diagnose and the issue(s) is almost always involved, takes time, involves decisions and trade-offs. He charges for it,.

 

Yeah I'm a huge fan of this guy on Tiktok: https://www.instagram.com/checkenginechuckllc

If you ever want to know why sometimes diagnostic work can cost more than $1K watch this dude do his thing... His BMW diagnostics are always the most maddening and near impossible. Sometimes he has to go on vacation for a while because you'll see in his videos how high his stress levels get.

 

Toyota has splice materials and repair terminals easily available with the online Electrical Wiring Diagram referencing their part numbers, and they train their technicians on safe wire harness repair and have whole manuals for it. But I'm sure they draw the line somewhere depending on how much splicing would need to be done.

 

Can you really trust them though? I mean these Stealerships get people for $400ish to replace a hybrid battery cooling fan because its too dirty and their sorry lazy arse is incapable of spending 20 minutes to clean the existing one.

Or in this instance, why splice a few wires together when you can make a big profit from your parts department or enrich your car sales department with a repair quote not much lower than the value of the car?

 

Not enough information to make a determination; but it sounds like a dealership bending someone over the oil barrel. And if the 4k doesn't fix the original problem; they going to eat it or just try another bend-over???? Load the parts cannon, it needs another shot!!! 10-15 hours labor??? they better be doing both engine and cabin rewire, either that or the snapping turtle is doing the work. It's an OEM cable following an OEM wiring loom, what's taking so much time? It's not like they need to repin each connector.
Just my two cents.....

 

What I almost find most exhausting are the little clips that hold the harness in place. There are a bunch of different kinds, so just as soon as you've honed your technique for releasing one kind, the next one will be something else.

At the factory, that harness was installed before all of the stuff in the engine bay, and before the dash in the cabin. I don't know how much of the stuff needs to be removed or at least unbolted and moved around for access, but it's sure to be a tedious job.

Keep in mind that the Engine Room Main wire harness is not the same as the Engine wire harness, which is smaller and just kind of goes with the engine. The engine room main harness (of which the big fusebox is an integral part) wraps all around the engine bay, penetrates the firewall in two places, and connects to multiple items, several ECUs, and other wire harnesses behind the driver and passenger kick panels (easy) and behind the dash (tedious).

 

Watched a tiktok once of a mechanic tearing apart a dashboard and saying it was going to be alot of hours and then he was like, "My fellow mechanic just noticed the four bolts that hold the hold the entire dash assembly to the frame." Caption then says "15 minute later" And dude has whole dash assembly on work bench and was talking about how much access he had to get everything done way faster.

Kind of like how everyone used to think you needed to remove the bumper covers on Gen2 Prius to change the headlight bulbs, when in truth it can be done by feel without removing much of anything once your hand learns what to do. Mechanics that find easier and faster ways to do repairs are hard to find. I wish I was one.

 

That's called working smarter NOT harder.
Lots of shops, especially dealerships will "stack" labor charges. ie. charge flat rate for spark plug replacement then again for ignition coil replacement or a belt driven water pump, again for belt replacement, and again for each idler bearing and/or tension replacement. It's not like they install the one item, button-up everything, then rip it apart again to replace the other item - but that's how they try to charge it unless you say something.

 

I've noticed something similar with what shops charge for brake jobs... And it's so incredibly stupid easy to swap out rotors and pads in like 20 minutes per axle, but when you look at the prices every shop charges it just seems like a big huge dumb racket that rips people off because you wouldn't want to risk your brakes failing right? I mean even people with 40% of their brake pads left will be told their pads and rotors "are dangerous" and need to be replaced.

 

But this is at a private shop is it not? In Colorado no less?.

 

Nothing like fear to pry open a wallet. Most people don't know that the brakes will constantly squeak when applied - that's what those warning tabs are for on those pads.

 

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With the right tech almost any wiring problem can be found and fixed. The exception might be a burned out or salt water flooded car. Finding and repairing the root cause might be an all day job but still could be $1200 rather than $4k.

The problem is automotive "electrical techs" capable of this are not in every shop and not in every city. Almost never at a dealer or flat rate shop.

I would start by defining the symptoms rather than asking if $4k is a good number for wholesale wiring harness and fuse box replacement.