What threw me off my chair was their $12K estimate to fix it ($2K in parts and almost $10K in labor, charged at $195/hr for 48 hrs!!!) Perhaps I erred professions and should have been a mechanic instead! See estimate below:
The Service Advisor claims that they need to change two harnesses and that they need to bring down the transmission to do this. Are they pulling our legs, trousers and else, or is this really what it takes to fix this?
Any feedback would be most welcomed.
Cheers and don’t let rodents into your engine bays…
Does the car run and drive? not advocating this you might be better off selling to carvana. If the carfax is clean, the body is in good condition etc…I don’t think Carvana deducts too much for engine lights.
Rewiring is a laborious job, especially on modern vehicles. I’d guess it would be an insurance write off in some cases, maybe yours included. If your vehicle has the Direct Adaptive Steering option, a.k.a steer-by-wire, I wouldn’t drive it even with the failsafes.
If you go in a repair route, you obviously should not pay $195/hr to a dealer but find a reputable indy shop which will charge you about half of it. You should also start looking to procure parts from used market, I am sure there are many of them as tons of salvaged cars will have perfectly good ones stripped off and put on sale.
Its covered by comprehensive insurance on your auto policy. Unfortunately I’ve had this happen multiple times. Its why I keep my comp deductible at $0.
If insurance doesn’t help, I advise forgetting standard mechanic routes. Find an indy who is willing to patch the wires rather than replace the harnesses entirely. Honestly, if that pic is all the damage, that is just a few hours work and a few bucks of materials for soldering/connecting/Insulating.
Another +1 for insurance. I honestly didn’t know it was a thing until my wife drove through a deep puddle in her X2 and locked up the motor. Thankfully didn’t terminally damage the engine, but BMW wanted something like $2-3k to repair stuff and wasn’t covered under warranty since it clearly wasn’t BMW’s fault. Service advisor suggested contacting insurance and it was extremely easy and painless. No change to our rates either so far.
File a comp claim. Had 1500 worth of wiring eaten in a previous car. Paid my 50 deductible, got a loaner and let the insurance handle it. Easy peasy.
Sure, there is a slight possibility your rates MAY increase. That said, unless you want to rewire the harnesses yourself, for the cost of parts and your time, along with being out of a car, your only choice is to pay them out of pocket, or file a claim and take the potential risk. Personally, a potential increase is the least of my worries. I pay insurance for this very reason…to bail me out when it’s needed. You can always shop your carrier should they try to rate bump you.
For all that’s holy, don’t use poison to kill rats. The rats die a slow painful death and eventually some other animal eats them and also dies a slow agonizing death from ingesting the poison within the rat.
I live near a park with open trash cans, and have 3 storm drains near my house, and my idiot neighbor has a giant bird feeder; bait stations are the only real option in some situations. I’m all for prevention but rats carry a plethora of diseases, cause a lot of house fires, and a lot of vehicle and property damage.
I don’t like using poison but it’s the least worst option out there.
I have a friend who does wiring harnesses for Nissans.
They are a PAIN, you basically have to take the whole car apart. Engine , Transmission, Dashboard, ick.
Get an independent to see if they can solder the broken pieces (A dealer will always go for replace). But if something is shorted in the ECU, you might want to total it. (ECU is going run 1k if it’s bad)
The insurance company has been responsive and it looks like this will be covered under my comprehensive policy and they agreed to allow Infiniti to do the repair.
The Adjustor managed to knock off $2K from the labor quote, but it will still run above $10K for everything with me only responsible for the deductible.
Will see what happens with my insurance premium at time of renewal. Hopefully no significant change given that I was not at fault.
I’ve never had a comp claim raise my insurance premium. However, it will make it difficult to switch insurance companies, if you so choose later on, because that claim will be on your file and can be used by the next company to set your initial premium.
