At 66 I would have been up for it. Now I've turned 78 I've just been 'persuaded' by the family to leave things like that to a garage.
I'm soon going to be 75 and wish I could leave everything to a garage. Some things I accept I can't do. BUT today, considering that we are taking Hardly to Norway in the Summer, I want to renew the entire (most of it) braking system when it gets warm so I priced everything up. New discs, pads, calipers, brake shoes and drums, wheel cylinders and rubber hoses, and master cylinder. Cost from the usual GSF and Euro is about £753 for the parts.
NOW: the question is, can I do the job?
My friendly 'No VAT here, matey" garage chap would I suppose do it in a day. He charges £60 / hour. This is less than 'er indoors's hairdresser who doesn't have to rent a garage, buy compressors, car lifts, welding gear and five thousand pounds of miscellaneous tools, and a £4,500 CAN Bus diagnostic computer. These hairdressers really annoy me, what they charge for poncing around with a pair of £10 scissors and some shampoo charging £60 an hour. This isn't some posh lah-dee-dah hair coiffeur either, just a small shop in a row of news/conf/tob/betting/chip shops in a small town in the middle of the country.
Anyway so my garage chappie would charge £480 for an 8 hour day's work, and I reckon it wouldn't take him that long. I'll ask him for a quote. Hardly did pass the MOT perfectly OK but he is 25 years old and has done 68,000 miles. So I think it might be prudent to spend £1100 to make sure he doesn't go in the ditch. That's a lot cheaper than changing a wet belt . . . . . . or fixing a mis-diagnosed fault on a modern tin box.