Car-Repair Costs Drop, but Southwest Still Pays Most
As the median age of a car on the road nears 11 years, drivers can breathe a (slight) sigh of relief: Fixing their cars is getting cheaper.
The average cost for car repairs stemming from a check-engine light fell 6% in 2011, California-based CarMD.com says, with drivers averaging $333.93 per repair. About two-thirds of that went to parts, with labor making up the remaining third. CarMD says lower labor rates, driven by the recession, are responsible for the overall decline in such repair costs, but the cost of parts has gone up, and severe repairs are becoming more common.
High airborne dust in Western states risked expensive repairs ($400, on average) to vehicles' mass airflow sensors, CarMD says. Nationwide, faulty oxygen sensors were the most common cause of a check-engine light. To replace those sensors, drivers paid the least in Nebraska and the most in Illinois.
See where your state ranked in the chart below.
Source: CarMD.com
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District of Columbia isn't a state! And if you're including that, why not include Puerto Rico and Guam?
Average auto repair costs should almost be the same across the entire country. The only variables with respect to repair cost are the difference in hourly rate each auto repair shop charges and how much they mark up their parts.There are standard guides that are not available to the public which say how many labors hours each repair should take and how much parts should costs. These variables should even out based on this information, but it doesn't. This article should be retitled State by State rankings on how much they overcharge you on repairs. To avoid this I have www.repair-smart.com They have access to these standard guides and use that information to make sure you only pay for what is fair and proper.
Any car repair shops that has the state of the art equipment would always be costly and you already know why.It's the maintenance of the repair tools that their after, because if one equipment isn't working then business is bad. That'd be a signal that the client needs to go to another car shop to have his car checked because their torque wrenches aren't working.