Quote:
Originally Posted by cdmulders
My indy charged me $330 for an OEM lock actuator and $170 to install it (before tax). This makes it, including 12% tax in BC, a total of $560 CAD to repair. Surly73, if you don't mind, I'd be curious how much your DIY repair costs for comparison. I suppose I'm trying to validate my laziness.
Cheers.
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My dealer was going to be $360+tax for the part, $172+tax for the mandatory "diagnosis" (even though I was telling them exactly what I wanted done) plus two hours at shop rate (something like $360+tax) to do the work.
Being in Canada I have fewer options for parts. I searched everything I could find in Canada and a few well known US parts houses (like ECS) looking for the genuine part.
I found prices for parts stated as "GENUINE BMW" in new condition ranging from $70-$400. After an email exchange with an Amazon.ca vendor explicitly confirming and demanding NEW GENUINE BMW parts as described in the listing I placed an Amazon.ca order for $144. I'm awaiting delivery and my check to see if it is genuine. If it's not up to my expectations I'll be contacting Amazon for refund/return and moving on to the next vendor. To me, $70 seems too good to be true, and some seller feedback on ebay and Amazon confirm non-genuine, but $145 is believable IME compared to ~$300 at the local dealer parts counter.
I already had butyl tape on hand from taking the doors apart on my E39 so I didn't need to purchase that.
I might not care about whether the part is genuine (since clearly the genuine parts fail a lot, or at least from 2011 when my car was built) except that it connects directly to the vehicle data buses etc... The electrical and mechanical part from another manufacturer could possibly be superior to genuine, but I'm just nervous enough about getting IBS problems because the latch doesn't "sleep", or the alarm going off, or who knows what, if there's a problem with non-genuine electronics on the vehicle data bus.
I am truly curious whether some lubrication in the right place could keep my original latch working. Winter around here isn't the season to start fooling around with things like this, though, and most of my expended effort will be in disassembly, not screwing up the vapour barrier, and reassembling properly without breaking clips and other collateral damage. If I'm doing all that, maybe I might as well just put in a new part for $144.