How to Read a Mechanic’s Work Order: Saturday Mechanic

• Saturday Mechanic
• repairs
• DIY

Your car won’t start. Again. Luckily, you have a manual-shift transmission and manage to bump-start it in the driveway. First stop? The repair shop. The service writer takes your information, and the mechanic takes your car. And oh yeah, while it’s on the rack, could you change the oil and rotate the tires, please?

A scant 2 hours later, the service writer calls you at work and delivers the bad news: You’ll be paying—big. But at least it’s running. Yay. You pay the substantial bill and head off to the day’s activities. Later that evening, you take a few minutes to peruse the repair order: The shop has replaced the starter motor, even though the engine cranked over, albeit slowly. Huh? If the starter motor is turning over the engine, why would it be replaced? You assumed there was some other issue, probably spark plugs or even a fuel-injection problem. But you’re not a mechanic, nor do you play one on TV. You can troubleshoot your repair after it’s done—without turning a wrench. Here’s an overview of the sometimes confusing world of the repair order.

Deconstructing the Repair Order

When you bring in your car with a complaint, the service writer gives the mechanic his interpretation of your issues in the instructions area of the RO. Now it’s up to the mechanic to figure out what’s wrong. His first diagnostic task for this slow-cranking, nonstarting car is to check the electrical system to determine the cause of the slow cranking. That usually means charging the battery or at least checking the state of charge. So he tests the battery, which includes charging it to a full 12.8 volts, then load-tests it, eliminating the battery as the problem.

Another attempt to start the engine proves unsuccessful, so the mechanic measures the voltage again, this time at the battery’s positive terminal and at the starter motor’s positive terminal, while the starter is trying to crank the motor. The respective voltages are a very low 7.7 volts and within 0.3 volts, eliminating the wiring as the cause. The RO doesn’t specify, but I’ll bet he checked the ground wiring from the battery to the engine for voltage drop as well.

Conclusion: a bad starter, one with an internal short that made it draw excess current. The slow cranking and high current drain undoubtedly lowered the voltage in the system below 8.5 volts, the point where the fuel pump, fuel-injection or ignition system (or all three) could sustain a running engine. The new starter solved the problem. Good news: In this case, your fears of being ripped off by the neighborhood mechanic were unwarranted.

1. Parts

This is where the mechanic lists all the parts he uses to fix your car. He takes the repair order to the parts window and purchases what he needs from the parts department. They fill in the prices. There may be both new and remanufactured (or even used) parts listed on the RO, as well as a few other charges. The shop is entitled to charge you for the disposal of old tires and for carting off used oil and coolant. Often this is a single, fixed charge that appears on every customer’s bill, even if your particular visit doesn’t generate any waste. Hey, somebody has to pay for all those red rags.

2. Contact Info

Obviously, the service writer needs to be able to find you. He’ll need a phone number to call you during the day to verbally okay any additional charges or to advise you if the repair has been delayed in some way.

3. Car Data

The mechanic needs specific info about your car. In addition to the usual stuff (make, year, model, engine), have the VIN (vehicle identification number) available. It’s on your registration card, so be sure you have that in your hand. Some TSBs affect only a certain range of VINs, and occasionally a manufacturer will change parts midyear instead of by model year. The VIN is necessary to order the correct part. It also helps him sort your car from other, similar ones in his database.

4. Estimate

Before you sign the repair order, the service writer will have a price for you. In most states, he’s not allowed to bill you more than 10 percent above this without your permission. If the repair is potentially very expensive, the customary procedure is to commit you to pay for the diagnosis before quoting you the total cost of the repair. (You agree to removing the cylinder head, for instance, to see if the issue is a bad head gasket or something worse, like a cracked block.) This estimate, by law, has to cover the cost of reassembling your vehicle if you elect not to get the repair done at that particular shop. That’s to prevent the shop from strong-arming you into an expensive repair while your disabled vehicle is spread out all over the repair bay like some partially butchered steer.

5. Retain Parts

In most places, state law requires that the repair facility return any used parts to you, if you want them. If you’re the suspicious type, like me, or just curious, by all means examine this box and your old parts in it. Usually the mechanic will place it in your trunk. There is an exception: Some items, such as alternators, starters and axles, are often returned to the manufacturer or a third party for rebuilding. You are not entitled to keep these parts unless you want to pay the core charge for them. Trust me, they’re happy to see most of the old stuff go home with you. It’s just more junk they have to pay to haul away.

6. Sign Here

This repair order is a legal document. By signing it, you’ve committed to having your car repaired at the agreed-upon price. At the same time, signing it protects you. The repair shop can’t arbitrarily increase the bill significantly above its estimate without your permission.

7. Total

Once the car is completed, the service writer totals up the labor time and multiplies it by the shop’s hourly rate, in this case, a modest $85. The rate varies widely by vehicle (Mercedes = expensive, Chevy = not as expensive) and by zip code (better parts of town might cost more). In some states, you’ll pay sales tax on the labor as well as the parts.

8. Recommended Repairs

If the mechanic notices something else on your car that needs service, he’ll make a note of it here. Any recalls or service bulletins—the first thing he should check for—should be listed here.

9. Labor Charge

Most shops charge for labor from a flat-rate book, with predetermined charges for many tasks. The amount of time it takes to replace a starter, for instance, is determined by the time it takes an expert mechanic to perform the operation. A motivated mechanic can often beat this flat-rate time, but you’ll still have to pay the predetermined amount. He’s expected to do better than book time, at least over the long haul, and his weekly paycheck is determined by the number of hours he books, regardless of how long it takes him. The reverse of this coin is that if the mechanic is having a bad day, or the fasteners are rusty, or for whatever reason the operation takes longer—you still pay only for the book time. In practice, it’s a system that’s fair for you, the mechanic and the shop. But this is not always the scenario. Some shops keep their mechanics on salary, preferring to bill on some other predetermined basis. Moreover, not all repairs are covered in the flat-rate book. Electrical work—chasing a shorted wire, for example—is usually billed as straight time. In this case, the mechanic simply keeps track of his time on the back of the form.

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