Wheel bearing kit price for Outback Gen 2

valerian · Post by **valerian** » Mon Jun 02, 2014 12:45 am

I hope this is the right forum for the wheel bearings.

One of my wheel bearings went bad. I decided to use a mechanic highly recommended to me by my colleague. The quality of work seems OK (how do I know ?? -- the wheel bearing is under the wheel, I cannot see).

The guy charged me $157 for the front wheel bearing kit, $2 for the grease, and for 1.3 hour labour at $100 ph.

I have no problem with the labour -- it is close to the recommended 1.2 hours. But the wheel bearing kit seems to be expensive. One could buy a quality aftermarket kit number 4133 online for $50, and for $80 in a walk-in shop. The genuine Subaru kit is $160, I found someone mentioning on the Internet.

I am just trying to understand his price structure and decide for myself whether it is worth to go to him again. I wrote an email to him asking whether he supplied an aftermarket or genuine kit, and got no reply. I do not want to drive in, and start asking questions -- this would reek of desperation.

Thus, can you guys suggest to me what is reasonable for me to expect -- the genuine or aftermarket kit ?

RSR 555 · Post by **RSR 555** » Mon Jun 02, 2014 5:53 am

Genuine bearings are NTN and aftermarket ones can be many different brands (including NTN but not in Subaru boxes), so best to ask what brand of bearings he fitted, as he may have used NTN ones but not brought them from Subaru.

As for having them fitted, I have a workshop myself and know that there is a discount for the trade but this is to cover warranty issues with parts that may fail. As the supplier will replace the faulty part but not cover the labour and I'm sure the customer doesn't want to pay extra for having the part replaced again, so to be fair to all, there must be a small charge placed on every item. Depending on what item it is and how much discount the workshop gets, is up to him how much he passes on to his customer.

I have many people come to me for help because my shop is not run as a full time business, so I can help them by keeping the cost down, even allowing people to help fix their car, so they don't have to pay too much in Labour. Most people alway say to ask for a quote before they get work done, which I can understand but sometimes this is hard to do, as prices can change and people get upset when you give them the bill and it's higher than what they expected, so I like to just do the work to the best of my ability and offer them the parts at a price that is fair.