very difficult to answer im afraid ..
Ill try to stay neutral ..
Its hard to give a min and max price for a component to be changed .. everything is normally done via the book time for a particular job .. but book times dont take into account things that dont come undone .
You could try and give a min / max price .. but how do you actually work that out .. there isnt a set time to cut out something .
With suspension work then it can be straight forward or an absoulte nightmare .. ive seen both ..
Ie .. Coffin arm .. if the ball joint nut starts spinning it has to be cut off , not that easy , if the bush bolt seizes then its again cutting out and not that easy .. this job can basically be between 1 - 3 hours and thats X1 arm .. to have both on x1 arm then its expensive ..and very difficult to give a price hence garages say an estimate ... a quote and they need to honour the price .
At the end of the day its not our fault that something snaps , doesnt come undone etc but i do feel most garages would not charge every min but charge what they think is fair for a set job .
I know with what i do .. fault finding .. i may take 5 hours but i say charge 3 as thats what i think is fair and thats what we do ..
The service advisors are lead by what the mechanics tell them to a certain extent ..
You also have to bear in mind how busy a garage is .. if snowed under then they are more inclined to charge .. they have after all put off other work to do your car and once again .. if it takes me 3 hours to remove something then why is it my fault ? i cant just undo something thats seized i have to cut and burn im afraid .
Over all though i understand , jobs like this can escalate and a look at the car first then a phone call to say .. its pretty coroded here .. the cost may well go up shall we continue would be in order .. but i can never be sure a bolt will come out untill ive done it so this approach is difficult .
Basically a garage will never win what ever we do , we tend to replace broken items and thats always going to be an unexpected cost .
Just thought it fair to put a mechanics point of view here ... well mine anyways
.. i dont represent my garage btw .