Price?

[brown.rw]

Opinion please,

I took my bike in b/c I could not change the shims myself. In the process the shop told me I had a bad coil caused by a bad generator. I have owned this bike less than a year so  am alright with the work being done. I do trust the shop as it is a student's father.

The total for all the parts and labor is $450. Does this seem reasonable?


The bike apparently runs great now...

thanks for the opinion.

[Trwhouse]

Hi there,
Well to start, if the work is already done and you've paid for it, why ask now if it was a reasonable price? You already paid it!
On the other hand...
They told you you had a bad coil because of the generator? What does that mean? They need to explain this because I think it is meaningless. By the way, Japanese motorcycles such as our GS500s have an alternator, not a generator, to produce electrical current. Did they say generator? If so, that isn't even valid here.
Also,tell us more --- what did the shop charge for the valve adjustment alone?
What did they charge for parts? What parts were replaced?
What did diagnosis cost for the "coil problem?" What was the coil problem? Was the bike not firing and not running? Did you complain about such a problem or did they just "find" it?
Personally, I think the bill sounds way high but you need to tell us more about what they charged you for each part of the work.
And next time, do it yourself and learn how to do it! None of it is that hard and you will feel good having tackled it.
Where are you located?
There's bound to be someone here on the board who lives near you and can help you in the future.
Best wishes,
Todd

[wreckhog]

A coil is $80. Installing a coil/troubleshooting is whatever it is. Sounds like you had a valve adjustment too. Am guessing that they ended up looking over the bike and doing some sort of tuneup. $450 is probably a good deal given how little you are saying about what was done, I can only speculate.

[brown.rw]

Thank for the input. Sorry it was so short earlier but I was at work and in a big hurry. To answer the first question, I am was asking b/c I am not very familiar with fare pricing from bike shops as I have only been riding a year. Second, I originally tried doing to work my self but was unsucesfull. I have a few post that talked about the problems and the diagnosis. I thought it was the valves and tried adjusting them, when i as unable to I asked the shop to. The shop is run by a student of mines father. After adjusting the compression the bike still ran poorly so they ran a few more test. They discovered that a coil was out in one of the cylinders and this was originally caused by a bad spark generator (which contained a broken maginent). Probably from where the previous owner laid down the bike.

I enjoy doing the work myself but it I live in an apartment bldg and no garage.

At this point the bike is running with a lil sputtering when i let off of the throttle and am hoping it is just old gas.

Any thoughts are appreciated. and I am sure I left something out here so please let me know.

Cheers

[spc]

Yeah, it all sounds plausible.  And seems a fair price for testing.  The only thing I'm left wondering is how they 'adjusted the compression' that generally entails a piston kit of some sort..........unless your valves were so out of whack that you weren't getting good compression and they adjusted them thus raising your compression.

[brown.rw]

The valve clearance was wrong. shims had to be changed. That is one thing I did check myself before taking it to the shop.