Hello, I had a friend who owns a small shop change the gauges in my 1970 Chevelle from standard light gauges to the factory optional meter gauges. I supplied all the parts; the metered gauges package, new wire harnesses & sending units. I assumed that this would cost between $500-$800 for his labor. He called me yesterday & told me he has 48 hours in labor, but was going to charge me 35 hours in labor at $60 an hour for a total labor bill of $2100. This seems high to me. Does anyone know how many hours it takes to do the gauge change over? Thank you, John

Wow, thats a freaking rip off!!!!!! Get your stuff and get the hell out of there!! Quick!! Last one i did i charged 300.00

Hi Bill, Thank you for your quick reply. How many hours did it take you?

I'm gonna open me up a guage installation shop!:sad:

The shops I have have been involved with won't quote a price on electrical work. They charge shop rate X the hours. You 'assumed' $500-$800 which leads me to believe he didn't give you and you didn't ask for a quote for the total. I don't see 30 to 40 hours labor as out of line.

So, he installed a temp sensor, plugged a wire into the distributor for the tach, pulled all 6 bolts that hold the carrier in, and replaced the gauges in 48 hours using all new parts INCLUDING the harness that you supplied? Did he forget to puch out for the evening or something? I would think 20 hours would be much more in line considering he's never probably done one. Unfortunately, you didn't get a quote/estimate of time.

I've done the job, but swapped from sweep gauge to round and had to adapt the harness and remount everything onto a new carrier. Still didn't have 20 hours into it.

I'm with Bowtie-72. I converted from a sweep dash to gauges, changed the heater core, heat-insulated the firewall and cleaned up the area behind the dash and probably had 20 hours into everything. Pulling the dash and replacing it was probably the quickest part of the job.

I did this myself over a weekend in my garage, maybe 12 hours working inconsistently. However, there was a lot of time researching it first - but the swap is INCREDIBLY simple once you know which wires to switch.

Hell, you could manually wire it in less time than he charged you. I think either he's not very good at it, didn't know what he was doing, or is ripping you off. I'll let you pick which one.