Excessive Charge to Repair/Replace Chewed Wire?

Bottom line is that the "little electronic gizmo" doesn't tell you what's wrong, only that cylinder 3 is misfiring. And even that's not always right. Now the tech has to find out why that particular cylinder isn't running right. A competent tech can do it pretty quick...an hour isn't out of the question.

Reasonable places will sell an hour of diagnostic time, or a base charge with prices associated to individual tests. Once the fault is determined, a cost for the fix will be established.

$325 sounds a little high, but isn't' unreasonable for a rodent-chewed wire diagnosis and repair.

 

if you feel that you could've done the diagnostics, found the issue, remove the bad wire(s) and re-wired everything and re-tested everything to working order...then that $325 is too much.

But...I doubt you could've done it, so just pay up and learn from it? Think of the $325 as the work done + a lesson learned

 

Hi there - I have a similar problem (chewed wire, shaking engine) and am wondering if you had it towed to the dealer or found it safe enough to drive. If so, how far was the drive? Mine shakes and rattles pretty violently and is even worse when driving it (I just drove it for a minute) so I'm wondering what your experience was.

 

Find anyone but a dealership to do this work... They are warranty specialists who replace whole systems to maximize revenue, not mechanics that fix things as inexpensively as possible.

Anyone with basic wiring skills can repair a damaged wire in less than 5 minutes, whereas a Toyota Stealership will tell you they have to replace the entire wiring harness and if it's in the dashboard they will be so happy to charge you 15 hours plus hundreds of dollars for the harness and then they'll be like, "It costs more to fix than the car is worth and we'd like to offer you a really great finance package for a brand new Prius." Happens all the time...

If you lived near me and came to me with this problem I'd patch the damaged wires for free because it only takes 5 minutes and odds are you'd be a loyal customer for a long time if I did that for you.

The stealerships on the other hand... If we actually had valid consumer protection laws most of them would be shut down by now and you'd have to order your car online like how Tesla does.