Dodge heater core fun

[shipwrecked]

Co-worker from base... she is a 70yo woman who works at our base gymnasium who has always been a nice person to me asked for some help. She has a 2000 dodge Dakota truck she uses in winter for commuting and also as a yard vehicle. Her heater stopped working long ago and she asked me to help. A year ago I wasn’t able to help so I suggested another engineer to assist. He never helped.
She asked again last week and I felt terrible it hasn’t been done yet after a year.
A local shop wants $600 just for the heater core replacement.

The part cost $45, but the whole dash needs to come out. There is no AC charge currently so I said I would do it.

I happened to get the truck this afternoon after she finished church, I dropped her off at home and went and picked up the heater core. There was one in stock!

She asked for a power steering pump too, so I ordered that (100 with the core charge). It will be here in the morning.

I have completed the disassembly of the dash and heater box. Put in the new core but ran out of daylight.

I will pick up the power steering pump tomorrow morning and that is a quick change out, just need to borrow the tool from autozone when I get it.

Tomorrow I will spend my day putting the truck back together. It is pretty straight forward but time consuming.


She wants to pay me for my time but I do not know what to charge. Of course parts! That comes to about 150 for parts and fluids.

I thought about 250-300 total for parts and labor. It’s a 8 hour job just for the heater core. Add another hour for the power steering pump.

Think that reasonable? I am not out to make a killing. I actually enjoyed this project.
















I. Am going to replace the battery cables as well while I’m in there!

[grump]

April, that $600 equals about $69 an hour after the price of the core. A dealership would be somewhere in the $90 plus area. The technician is not going to get anywhere near that. I've done body and paint for most of 50 years and I tried (not always successfully) to charge what I made at my regular job, which used to be about $20 an hour. I probably ended up averaging $15- $18 an hour, so I would say you're close on your thinking.

[shipwrecked]

I finished the heater core and power steering pump replacement last night as sun was going down.



Took 10 full hours for the heater core itself.



Power steering pump took two hours.

Today the pups go to the veterinarian for check up and when we finish I may tackle the battery cable issue. (About 40$)

As of now I’m at 150 for just parts.
If I do a coolant flush, that’s another 50.

So I’m thinking at a minimum 240 on parts alone.

[shipwrecked]

Today I finished the dodge for good. I ran the truck a few times and could hear gravel sound around the belt. Pulled serpentine belt and checked the idler pulley. Sure enough it was rough. 30$ replacement installed and replaced the power steering reservoir cap too since the old one allowed fluid to puke out on a turn. 6$ fix.

Overall parts cost 215.00

Betty wrote a check for 475. That was 50 more than I expected.

She’s happy the heater burns your face off.

I gave her one page of parts cost break down
One page blow by blow of what I did.
1/2 page of recommendation of near future maintenance based on observations I saw during this job.

She was happy with the time and work I did.