# BOOK LABOR HOURS FOR HONDA REPAIRS



## orangputeh (Nov 24, 2016)

does anyone have a link from Honda for labor time for repairs? Wish [email protected] was still here.

I know some of them because I ask the head mechanic at the dealer but dont wanna pester him. I know many repairs have a minimum charge of $25. Some I agree with. Anything easy for me that just takes like 15 minutes or less I usually do for free. The owner usually gives me something anyway.

I know the right side tranny repair/rebuild is only 2.25 hours .It usually takes me 4-5 hours if everything goes perfect.

What about splitting the machine and reassembling machine for auger belt/bearing replacememnt? I'm guessing one hour . I do that all the time.

I know the service machine labor is one hour ( even though it takes me 3-4 to do it my way )
cable replacement?
switching engines?
replacing tracks
replacing height adjustment pedal
replacing handlebars
replacing coil
replacing starter
cleaning carburetor
installing impeller kit?
servicing augers?
other common repairs?
mobile work?

Honda probably doesnt give access to their labor book but I just dont wanna overcharge or undercharge. I have been charging more in the last year or so and havent received any complaints.

I do receive all the work I can handle and then some. I will tell people to take to dealer but they insist I do it. That tells me maybe I'm under charging too much? 

Thanks.


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## ST1100A (Feb 7, 2015)

orangputeh said:


> does anyone have a link from Honda for labor time for repairs? Wish [email protected] was still here.
> 
> I know some of them because I ask the head mechanic at the dealer but dont wanna pester him. I know many repairs have a minimum charge of $25. Some I agree with. Anything easy for me that just takes like 15 minutes or less I usually do for free. The owner usually gives me something anyway.
> 
> ...


All of the Honda warranty labor flat-rate times are built on assembly line times at the factory, that is why they are so low hour times.
An authorized Honda dealer has a book with warranty times in them that they are not allowed to give out to the public.
They do have special labor times that a dealer can just make up, but there is a limit on how much extra time, like maybe an extra hour and a half over what the normal job times are without having to get special authorization from Honda.


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## Ziggy65 (Jan 18, 2020)

orangputeh said:


> I do receive all the work I can handle and then some. I will tell people to take to dealer but they insist I do it. That tells me maybe I'm under charging too much?
> 
> Thanks.


If people are favouring you over dealers, that doesn't necessarily indicate you are under charging.
From reading your posts, you obviously do quality work, care about doing the job right and treat your customers well. They probably want you to do the work because of your reputation and they trust you more than they do the local dealers. Word of mouth references from other customers is better advertising than any ad you could ever place in a newspaper or online.
If I had a Honda and lived in your area, I would also want you to do the work


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## Jackmels (Feb 18, 2013)

Independents are also Usually Fast in Comparison with the Dealers who may take the job in, but won't get to it for Weeks.


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## orangputeh (Nov 24, 2016)

ST1100A said:


> All of the Honda warranty labor flat-rate times are built on assembly line times at the factory, that is why they are so low hour times.
> An authorized Honda dealer has a book with warranty times in them that they are not allowed to give out to the public.
> They do have special labor times that a dealer can just make up, but there is a limit on how much extra time, like maybe an extra hour and a half over what the normal job times are without having to get special authorization from Honda.


I understand this. the truck shop at my old job told me they have labor times for each job. Most of the time for example the job may say something like one hour. The mechanics could do it in about 30 minutes because they have done that particular job a 100 times. But they charge the one hour. Conversely , if they took 2 hours to do that job they could only charge one hour.

I do the same since I am so slow so I want the time allowances. I dont want to overcharge. Most jobs take me twice as long as dealer techs but I charge what the dealer charges in most cases time wise. My hourly rate is much lower than the dealer in some cases since I dont have their overhead.


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## ST1100A (Feb 7, 2015)

orangputeh said:


> I understand this. the truck shop at my old job told me they have labor times for each job. Most of the time for example the job may say something like one hour. The mechanics could do it in about 30 minutes because they have done that particular job a 100 times. But they charge the one hour. Conversely , if they took 2 hours to do that job they could only charge one hour.
> 
> I do the same since I am so slow so I want the time allowances. I dont want to overcharge. Most jobs take me twice as long as dealer techs but I charge what the dealer charges in most cases time wise. My hourly rate is much lower than the dealer in some cases since I dont have their overhead.


You are right about that O.P.
I have access to a lot of the old Printed book Flat-Rate labor times that Honda paid for warranty work.
Honda puts all that info online to the dealerships only through a secure account now, years ago it was all printed out on paper that the dealerships got.
If I would ever copy and show the public the warranty times that Honda paid for said jobs, I would get into a lot of trouble, as would any dealer or person that made that info public.
Generally a dealer used those labor times and multiplied that by a certain number, say "Time and a half" or Double time". A lot of dealerships made up their own formula's to come up with their estimated labor times for repairs based off of a formula they used for Customer Pay Jobs.
The dealerships were only allowed to charge so much back to Honda for warranty work, that is where the "Honda Warranty Flat Rate Guide" came into effect. It was basically used for the dealership to know how much to charge back to Honda for warranty work, and they also used it to calculate labor for "Customer Work".
A dealer could charge Honda more time if a certain job had special considerations and problems plus troubleshooting. All of that had to be approved through Honda by using special "Codes" that were added to the warranty claims.
Certain dealerships could charge Honda their "Full Labor Rates" if they had special technicians with special certifications from Honda, otherwise Honda only paid a "Set" labor rate - Dollar per Hour, that was less than the dealerships normal labor rate hourly charge.
A good technician that was paid "Flat Rate" could make a lot of money if they were fast at what they did, that is another reason Honda cut back on their labor times.
If a job took longer than the flat-rate book specified, or the tech was not that good or fast, the tech would lose money by the end of their pay period.
Even the good techs would lose pay if there was no work and they were paid "Flat-rate", so many of them were paid hourly, some hourly plus "Flat-Rate-Bonus".


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## orangputeh (Nov 24, 2016)

ST1100A said:


> You are right about that O.P.
> I have access to a lot of the old Printed book Flat-Rate labor times that Honda paid for warranty work.
> Honda puts all that info online to the dealerships only through a secure account now, years ago it was all printed out on paper that the dealerships got.
> If I would ever copy and show the public the warranty times that Honda paid for said jobs, I would get into a lot of trouble, as would any dealer or person that made that info public.
> ...


I know most of the time limits on most repairs. It's just the weird stuff like welding and fabrication , engine swaps, diagnostics which can be time consuming , fixing or redoing owners screw ups etc.

Bottom line , in these cases I just ask myself what I think would be fair if I were on the other end?

Some jobs take me a long time and I just cant charge by the hour. I quote by the job. The owner says okay and it takes however long it takes.

Yes , this backfires sometimes. Recently quoted a job price at about one hour but it took 5 since I was new at this kind of repair. Over time I can probably cut that time quite a bit.

The first right side tranny job took me 12 hours. the next one was 8 hours, the next 5 and so on. These were all on my machines. I asked the head mechanic at the dealer about this and he said Honda only allows 2.25 hours.. I asked him if he could do it in that time and he laughed. With rust and other problems , rarely. Everything has to be perfect he said to get close to that.My best time was 4 hours and felt like celebrating.

But he also told me they make almost as much money on their parts markup. I don't.Parts prices used to be about 30% off from Honda and I used to make extra but everyone's prices are almost as high as Honda. It is discouraging. I told my main supplier if I knew they were going to jack up prices so much I would have bought 10k worth of parts before they did.


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## ST1100A (Feb 7, 2015)

orangputeh said:


> I know most of the time limits on most repairs. It's just the weird stuff like welding and fabrication , engine swaps, diagnostics which can be time consuming , fixing or redoing owners screw ups etc.
> 
> Bottom line , in these cases I just ask myself what I think would be fair if I were on the other end?
> 
> ...


Again, you are right 100% on everything you wrote there Orangputeh.
Honda would allow us extra time, say up to an hour or a little bit more,depending on the particular job, then we had to get special authorization for anything over that.
So yes, it makes it hard to figure what to charge and be fair about that to your customers.
That can be very tricky when you have to do special fabrication work, things like welding and other types of repairs other than just regular part replacement. Things like frozen bolts, frozen parts connected to each other, like wheel hubs to axles, the list goes on. Like you mentioned, "Rust".
Honda parts "Mark-up" was anywhere from 30% up to 200% on the different parts.
That was probably because of how common the part was, and how long it was in storage at the warehouse. Common parts seemed to have a lower mark-up because they weren't sitting in the warehouse, paying "Rent" for "Storage".
Honda used to be excellent for having parts in stock, especially parts for older machines, cars, motorcycles, power equipment, everything. Then if they did not have it, they would have the part made for you, usually within 30 days you had it. I had many parts made and received them from Japan within 30 days for bikes that were 30 plus years old if they didn't have the part in their warehouses.
They don't do that anymore, and cut way down on warehousing to keep the prices down, or so they say. They don't have the parts availability anymore like they used to for older machines.
They supposedly scrapped all the older N.O.S. parts stock, and sold them off wholesale to many people who now sell them N.O.S. on places like EBay. Even dealers bought up a lot of them when they knew what Honda was going to do, and if the dealer was a big dealership with a lot of money to buy all of them.
We noticed Honda started way back on things back in the later 90's after Mr Soichiro Honda died and the new management took over. That is when their quality started to slip, and parts were no longer available. Mr Honda was more about "Quality" and satisfying the customer, the "New" management was all about making a $Buck$, and they started going downhill with everything after Mr Honda was gone.
That was hard on the older dealerships because our customers always expected the same quality that they got with the "Old" Honda products and didn't mind paying the extra money, then when they saw the "New" stuff with a lower price, they expected the same quality, and it wasn't there anymore.
Honda did that because they wanted their sales "Numbers" to go up and sell more machines, another reason they went the "Big Box Store" route. They didn't care about quality anymore, just the "Mighty Dollar" and profit meant everything to them. That was unfortunate for the buyer, but the new management didn't care.


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## 140278 (Aug 27, 2020)

I have to back Steve up here. when i was a dealer service manager the warranty books had a code for time involved on bad jobs, using it we could get paid for the actual time spent on a none coded job, 

doing fab and welding to make a repair breaks down to charging for your time. I doubt there is a time code to be found anywhere . spend 3 hours welding charge the 3 plus SAY another 1 or 2 for material used, welding rod/wire/gas .you can't give that away. you will go broke.


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## ST1100A (Feb 7, 2015)

captchas said:


> I have to back Steve up here. when i was a dealer service manager the warranty books had a code for time involved on bad jobs, using it we could get paid for the actual time spent on a none coded job,
> 
> doing fab and welding to make a repair breaks down to charging for your time. I doubt there is a time code to be found anywhere . spend 3 hours welding charge the 3 plus SAY another 1 or 2 for material used, welding rod/wire/gas .you can't give that away. you will go broke.


Yes they had a special code for the time, and another for materials.
We had to take a lot of different photo's of all of the job and send the pictures to Honda for verification. Many times Honda would send a service Rep to our dealership to investigate the problems for their own training, and pass along the information to their engineers in order to make future improvements on the product.


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## thefixer (Nov 19, 2017)

My motto is: I don't work real fast but I charge a lot !!


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## orangputeh (Nov 24, 2016)

thefixer said:


> My motto is: I don't work real fast but I charge a lot !!


was gonna call you to see if you got that 828 squared away but a guy came over with another 828 and we worked on it for a couple hours.


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## thefixer (Nov 19, 2017)

I'm gonna adjust the throttle tomorrow. I'm gonna finish the impeller flaps and handlebar supports first, then I'll get it off the table. Everything else is done on this one.


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## Grunt (Nov 11, 2013)

thefixer said:


> My motto is: I don't work real fast but I charge a lot !!


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## thefixer (Nov 19, 2017)

Grunt said:


> View attachment 170509


I'm pretty sure I need this sign !!


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## orangputeh (Nov 24, 2016)

reminds me of that story about the ship mechanic. huge ship had a broke engine. owner brought in the world's greatest ship mechanic.

mechanic showed up , took out his hammer, whacked the engine , and then viola , the engine worked !

ship owner got the invoice bill of $10002 !!!! he DEMANDED an explanation.

mechanic replied ....hammer $2

knowing where to hit $10,000

that makes a lot of sense to me. many many times I have fixed someones blower very easily. sometimes in a minute and usually didnt charge anything as felt guilty about charging anything. but then again, the owner may have spent hours trying to fix , finally threw up his hands . loaded it on his truck , brought it to me. 

so , they are paying for my experience. a lifetime of wrenching on various machines, cars, trucks , harleys , small engines and hundreds and hundreds of snowblowers.

I rarely fix in front of people anymore.Just tell them to leave off, fix it and charge them something instead of nothing for an easy fix. if i have to repair a ******* fix I charge more than usual as the fix is usually a PIA. 

We have an investment in time, tools , space , and acquiring knowledge that needs to be compensated for.


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