Garrett came in from the driveway and said, "My car does this thing where it keeps going up and down after a bump." He did a motion with his hand like a boat on a lake. I rode along with him that evening down Frederick Avenue, and he was right. Every dip, the front end bounced two or three times before it settled. Going over the railroad tracks it felt like the car was shrugging.
The Civic had 146,000 miles on it, and I'd bet the struts were original. Struts and shocks are what stop a car from bouncing on its springs. When they wear out, the car floats, the tires wear unevenly and stopping distances get longer. On a teen driver's car, that last one is the one I care about.
A strut job on the front of a Civic needs a spring compressor unless you buy complete assemblies, and it needs an alignment afterward no matter what. Both of those are on my pay-the-shop list. So I called our shop, and a week later I had a $918 invoice. Here's how I read it, line by line, as a guy who is not a mechanic.
- Front strut assemblies (2), $142 each: $284
- Rear shocks (2), $48 each: $96
- Labor, 2.8 hours at $132: $369.60
- Four-wheel alignment (sublet to the tire shop): $119
- Shop supplies: $18
- Sales tax on parts: $31.40
Total: $918.00.
The front ones are complete assemblies, sometimes called quick struts. That means the strut, the spring, the top mount and the bearing all come as one unit. They cost more than just the bare strut, but they save labor time because nobody has to compress the spring and swap pieces over, and you get a new spring and mount instead of reusing tired ones. The back of a 2012 Civic uses shocks rather than struts, and those are a simpler, cheaper part.
I asked the service writer whether the parts were the cheapest available. He said no, they were the middle tier, and that the cheapest ones sometimes ride stiff or come back in a year. I'm fine paying the middle. I don't need the fancy ones on a car I hope Garrett drives for two years and then sells.
The labor
Labor is billed by what's called book time, which is a standard number of hours for the job published for every make and model. It doesn't matter if the tech is fast or slow; the job pays what the book says. For front struts and rear shocks on this Civic, the book said 2.8 hours. At $132 an hour that's $369.60.
The one thing I checked: if two jobs overlap, a good shop shouldn't charge full time for both. Taking the front wheels off for the struts doesn't need to be paid twice. This invoice looked right to me, and I asked anyway. You're allowed to ask.
The alignment and the little lines
Replacing struts changes the angles of the front wheels, so an alignment afterward isn't an upsell. It's part of the job. Our shop sends alignments to a separate tire shop down the road and bills it through as a sublet at what the tire shop charges them. $119 for four wheels is right in line with what I've seen around St. Joseph.
Shop supplies, $18, is the line that bothers people. It covers the rags, the cleaners, the anti-seize, the little stuff that never gets itemized. Most shops charge it as a small flat amount or a percentage. If it had been $80, I'd have said something. At $18, I'll pay it.
Sales tax applied only to the parts, not the labor. I didn't know that until I added it up myself on the back of a gas receipt in the shop lobby.
Who paid
We did. Garrett's money went into buying the car, and our rule is that safety repairs come out of the family budget, while extras and anything caused by his own driving come out of his. Struts on a car with 146,000 miles are wear, not his fault. He did come with me to drop it off and pick it up, and he read the invoice in the parking lot, which was the part I actually cared about.
The ride home was flat. Over the tracks the car went down once, came up once and stopped. Garrett said, "Okay, that's a lot better." From a sixteen-year-old, that's a five-star review.