Was that including parts? I just sent mine in to get the lowers replaced and turns out the uppers were shot, too. I was originally planning on having all four replaced, but my wallet begged to differ. I asked the shop for Moogs and they were all installed yesterday. The damage?

$598.54 out the door. Something like $320ish in labor, $160 for lowers, $88 for uppers, and 35ish bones in tax. I'm waiting until next week for an alignment so my bank account can recover, but it's not pulling and drives straight so I should be ok for a short amount of time.

 

Holy ****e! did they lube it up before they stuck it in?! ^

Get yourself some: 10,12,13.19 & 36 mm sockets, 13,18&19mm wrenches, a BFH and BFP (big f*@#inghammer and prybar ), a pair of side cutters for the cotter pins and do it yourself. Its easy as hell, I'll walk you through it if need be. you'll save like $300 tthat you can buy a catback system with.

 

Thanks Tetanus, I didn't realize I could save lots of money doing it myself. Johnkoch originally wanted to know how much it would be to replace lowers at a shop, not doing it by himself. Let's see how my bill compares to the other estimates provided in this thread:

Ok, so far we have a reasonably vague $200 total for just lowers. Maybe less, maybe more.

For uppers, John was originally quoted $63.86 more than I paid for Moogs.

Every shop I called quoted the same amount of time, so I went with the garage that had the lowest labor rate of $55/hr. My brother's company charges $78 an hour. I think I did ok...

Hmmm, 4 hours per side and a comment about not wanting to do it again if someone paid them.

Looks like I saved $150 there. And I think $110 in parts for me would've been the auto store TRW's. I'm ok with spending $140 over the course of 80-100K miles for peace of mind knowing my front end has some of the best quality ball joints made.

So it was a fluke that Kyle found a shop that would do one side for $185 (assuming a $65 average alignment). Interesting, wasn't worth his time. If someone as knowledgeable as Kyle with a wider selection of tools than myself didn't feel it was worth his time, how should I feel about it?

Now the story changes. Instead of $100 per side, now its $1000 total. Unless the last time he checked was in 1989, I find it very hard to believe an $800 price hike. Maybe the original estimate was nothing more than a blind guess.

Here goes: 330-90(one ball joint)=240-75(alignment)=165/2(hrs. labor)=82.5/hr labor rate. So using that labor rate and my quoted times it would come out to be $473.55 in labor alone, plus $248 for Moogs. $764.85 out the door for a difference of $166.30. Didn't come out too bad on that one either.

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Well I went to 4 different places when I needed mine done and it was around $350 labor balljoints + an alignment that I also needed

 

97Blazer, was that just for lowers or all four?

 

just for the lower

 

Let me add that I would have no problem doing these myself for a significant savings now. Difference being that I now have an air compressor, impact gun, impact hammer, torch, grinder, etc. Without these power(ed) tools, I spent WAY too much time replacing the one side myself. I know how much $$ my time is worth and it was much cheaper to have a shop do the other side.

And Tetanus... You may want to have a read through the rules of the forum.

 

Ok well i got them replaces this weekend along with the right side idler arm that was very loose, and it drives much better now,except for me having stock shocks with 150 thousand miles on it,but thats for later.Thanx for all of your help...