Car Repair.... Without the HUGE Mechanic Bill.

Okay, so as many of you have had experience with. You think your car is driving a little weird, so you take it to a local garage to have it looked at. When they call you to tell you what is wrong with it, it's much more than you thought.

For me, I took my wife's Acura MDX to the garage because it seemed to be riding a little rough. They called and told me that the shocks, struts, and tires all needed to be replaced, and it would cost me about $1800 dollars.... That is a lot of money to come up with for when you think that your car is just riding a little rough.

I'm no mechanic, but after talking to a buddy of mine, we figured that we would be able to take care of the shocks ourselves, since the garage said that there was a tangible problem with one of the shocks in the back, the struts they said should be replaced because they are the original ones.... not a compelling argument.

For the shocks, they would have charged almost $300 to replace.

For the struts, they would have charged about $600 to replace.

And for the tires, they were figuring between $800 and $900 for replacing and aligning.

I ended up getting a good deal for Tires Plus for the first time ever! They only cost $550 due to an error on their part.

I searched around locally at auto part stores for the shocks we needed, and they were all about $50 each no matter where I looked. I found them on Amazon for almost $40 dollars cheaper for the pair, delivered to my door for free in two days!

So my friend and I figured out what we needed to do to replace the shocks, and we did it in under an hour, saving me $200! (Minus the food I ordered for him for helping me) Plus, the car drives a lot better now than it did before. Such an inexpensive fix for such a big difference in driving performance. I never thought I would be a person who worked on fixing a car.

Now that the tires and the shocks have been replaced, we are going to replace the struts, but in order to do that, I just ordered the repair manual for her car today. I should have it on Tuesday. Lance and I will need to get together to figure out what we need to do to replace the struts, then I will order them from Amazon and Lance and I will take pictures of us replacing them for your enjoyment!

The moral of the story is that I was able to save money on car repair by doing it myself, and you can too! Find your friend that knows more about it than you, and use Amazon to find inexpensive parts.