alt Hacker News> repair is expensive ($1000+ for performance cars, not that much cheaper for Civics)
I can almost guarantee the lion's share of this is shop labor, not parts, and pressing a bushing out and back in would be more expensive after accounting for that labor than just swapping the suspension arms. This is often the piece that gets missed in these discussions of "why am I replacing this huge assembly for a tiny part", if the whole assembly is coming out to deal with that tiny part anyways and shop labor is $200/hour it's cheaper to swap the assembly a lot of the time.
Try getting any repair beyond routine maintenance done on a car in the US for under $1000 these days. Car maintenance is one of the things I'm happy to DIY in most cases because the delta on costs is massive and as someone that works on computers all day it's vaguely enjoyable to get angry at a mechanical object for a change.
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and pressing a bushing out and back in would be more expensive after accounting for that labor than just swapping the suspension arms
Really? It's literally a few minutes (a few dozen $ at $200/hr, or $3.33/min) for any shop with a press. Removing the assembly from the rest of the car is going to take much longer.
I’ve moved in to doing my own plumbing, electric, HVAC. Tend to keep new enough cars that they don’t need much, knock on wood. But it’s not uncommon in “making” $500 an hour or more doing electric or HVAC.