XS 400 Shop Fees/Diagnosis Costs

William

XS400 Member
Messages
9
Reaction score
1
Points
3
Location
Chicago
Hi All,

I posted awhile back about my XS400 that wasn’t running - followed the advice on my last post and actually got the bike to run. The bike is not in the best shape (some idling issues) but I have rode it about 4 times now and it seems to run well. I dropped it off at a shop just to have a mechanic look over it and they sent me a bill that seems a little ridiculous to me. They said that the repairs on this bill are considered tier 1 repairs (the least amount they can do to make it run). I declined and told them I would just work on it myself, but now they still want to charge $180 for a diagnosis fee. Up front, they told me they would only do an inspection for $40 and never said anything about a $140 “diag rough” fee. I’m newer to motorcycles, so I wanted to see if this seems right. I attached the full bill below - the full tier 1 cost is 1,827.06. Any help/advice is greatly appreciated!
 

Attachments

  • 39D20CAB-C147-4658-99A3-C9ED1B9A0423.jpeg
    39D20CAB-C147-4658-99A3-C9ED1B9A0423.jpeg
    292.2 KB · Views: 235
  • FEDE9E2B-6B8D-4041-9484-CEEE9B77D86E.png
    FEDE9E2B-6B8D-4041-9484-CEEE9B77D86E.png
    316.7 KB · Views: 226
you're probably paying for the time they had to look the bike over, probably half a day?
unfortunately time is money and someone has to pay for it.

should have got a quote before hand in retrospect
 
They were SUPPOSED to give a quote on a fee that large to begin with and likely state law will cover that if one looks into it.

You don't pay for how long a bike is in the shop and only an idiot needs a half day to diagnose. An hour is more than enough. First thing I would demand is what just exactly got done for $180.

People also need to learn that when you take in a machine with a wide open complaint like 'find out what it needs' or 'is wrong with it' you have opened yourself up to what may prove to be legal charges that may hold up in court, and YOU were the one that ordered it. Buyer beware, NEVER take anything in without a sharply defined order of what you want done and be prepared to pay for that. I'd put limits on it too, they need to know them, if you don't give them they take you to the cleaners.

(EDIT) Just read the estimates, you need to get as far away from that shop as you possibly can, some of those charges are wildly high. Like changing plugs and fuel line.You need to ask what the shop hourly rate is.

If you have that many things wrong you have a money pit bike. Stop driving it if the tires are that bad, they can KILL YOU!
 
Last edited:
Taking a bike to a dealer is never a cheap solution. It does take time to look over a bike. I have seen sheets like this for a xs400 bike that was in very bad shape and the guy just left the bike for the shop to sell for parts. I think it was almost 2K for parts and labor. The frame was hacked all up was the reason why I didn't want it. But at $76 hr. labor and very high OEM parts costs ( if they are even available) most bikes are just junked. These shops will not look for cheaper aftermarket stuff or good used parts. If you have all the parts and need them to just install them it my help with cost. With old bikes it's better to do most things yourself.
 
In my experience, unless you have an attachment to a bike/car, as in it was your dad's, grandpa's, or your first bike etc...if you can't do the work yourself, you are usually cheaper off buying one that is already complete and in good running order. Buying a used, worn out bike/car, that has been sitting for years, will be a money pit unless you have the time patience and skill to do it right yourself. Sending something like that to a shop is like what was stated in the very beginning of the quote, should we just leave it be? Could be a can of worms. Everyone of these old pieces of iron is a can of worms just waiting to be opened.
Unless you like worms, and it appears a lot of folks on this forum do, dump the can and run the other way.
 
Thank you all for the replies. I do have an attachment to the bike - my dad passed away 9 years ago and it was his bike. I have been paying to store it for the past 9 years and finally had a chance to pick it up over the summer. I have put so much time and effort into this bike just because it is sentimental. I opened up the carbs and saw they had been worked on by someone in the past - pretty cool feeling thinking my father was the last one to work on it - and now (probably 30 years later), I am using his tools to work on it.

Being so new to motorcycles, I always thought that it was a tight knit community where people always help other people. I witness that all the time in these posts on here and I guess I just felt it would be the the same with a mechanic. I was told that the bike was potentially running on one cylinder and that’s what I wanted to have checked out - sorry I did not post that earlier, I was a little upset and my thoughts were not clear. I am going to try and pick it up today or tomorrow and see what I can find out. Once again, thank you all for the support! I will let you all know any updates!
 
Then the bike is worth whatever you feel it's worth. Unfortunately for a lot of folks new into projects like this, repair shops are in the business of staying open and making money. I couldn't read too much on the second page, but I would ignore the prices and use that as a good starting checklist. You could probably chase the guy down to get him to drop his price on the original bill, but I wouldn't expect anymore help from the guy after that, especially if you had asked him to figure out if it was running on one cylinder and to diagnose a rough idle. If you pay the bill and say, look, I want to do this myself because it was my Dad's bike, they'll likely be more willing to help out with some "free" advice down the road.
Just my two cents...
Is it only running on one cylinder?
 
Just got back from the shop. Went over pricing and went through bill. Ended up with him saying don’t pay me but never come back here. I tried multiple times to pay something after that but he said no - I did leave about $100 worth of parts with him so that basically cancels it out. He told me that they worked on my bike for 5 hours going through and diagnosing it..... My bike started backfiring when I rode it home, which it did not do before.

As for running on one cylinder, I cannot tell as I don’t have any riding experience to compare it to. If I take the left spark plug off while idling, it will still run but can definitely tell there is less power. If I take the right off while idling, it immediately shuts off. I wanted to do a compression test myself, but was not sure which tool to use (have read that there are different sizes?)

In all, thank you all so much for the support. I would have paid $180 if it wasn’t for you all looking over that bill and backing me up.
 
'First thing I would demand is what just exactly got done for $180.'

That answer of mine still stands and saying they worked on it for 5 hours is a lie if they still didn't say what they did. The estimate seems to list things to be done in the future, it is not clear what they did this time other than count $$$$$$.

15 minutes to do the estimate of things wrong, 90% of it being visual, look at the list. Give them 60 more to actually piddle around with some of it. I'd laugh if somebody told me 5 hours spent there.

I've seen that type of shop haughtiness before and they all go under eventually. You CANNOT charge car hour rates for bike and hope to stay solvent, it's that simple, the market will not bear it as most bring bikes up that are old and many never take the new ones there. The 'don't ever bring it back' says all you need to know, they are insulted because you balked at rich man's rates. The last shop I was in like that filled my head with all kinds of BS about how good they were and how much their work was worth then proceeded to butcher a one off unobtanium cylinder block with a bore job, the cutter used was junk and the hone job did not remove the cutter snag marks and one piston would not even go into its' 'matched hole', the guy was stupid enough to try to drive it in by hand in front of me claiming it would 'loosen up at startup, they all do that', a whopping lie. I demanded a refund based on the quality of work and over the now scarred up brand new piston he forced in and they demanded the same thing of me, get out and never EVER come back. Later on they got sued for fraud by others and shop finally died when the news got out the shop was garbage.

That shop was like a well known here national branded shop for race cars Reher & Morrison, they built absolutely fantastic quality race stuff for THEIR own use to get notoriety but then paying $25K (late '80s) for a killer fatblock BBC from them would get people engines that blew up in the first 5 runs, they became known for it. I saw a whole stream of them do it. Another shop our dingy little garage took the local Cigarette racing boat market from, Blue Max Performance, the world famous funny car team. They did the same, charged astronomical rates for utter crap work. We refreshed a double 454 Cigarette boat up and it ran so well all the other guys wanted one the same way after spending usually around $50K each for Blue Max work, we did the same for $15K and the engines both outlasted and outran their 'best work', to hear them tell it.

You figure out pretty quick a shop is full of crap if you go in eyes wide open, they will be the first to tell you. Here those shops come and go, they don't stay long at all. Nobody wants to do honest quality work any more, they think they deserve megabucks and even worse if you have an older bike, they do not want the complication of trying to rundown hard to find parts. They will expect you to pay the shop rate for investigation of where to get those parts and the markup will be hell.

Why nobody ever touches my cars and bikes except me for 50 years now, you will never get paid higher per hour in your life by doing that work yourself and most is not hard at all. Even more so on modern electronic cars if you can pick up understanding of them, you can't take a car in now without a quote of usually $1k on literally the smallest of things, it's beyond belief. I've fixed so many of those $1K moneymakers for $25 and under I can't count. Just fixed a broken throttle body for $4 and street price $400 for a new one.
 
Uh, if bike has E3 plugs in it GET RID OF THEM, that may be much of your issue.

E3 plugs are total trash, I used to sell them and nearly every single one came back as warranty, they are gimmick crap product. Countless cars went WAAAAYY bad when they switched to those. What the fancy airbrush artwork ads of a nuclear explosion doesn't show you is that with all the metal they have on the end both creates a mask to the spark and flame kernel as well as making the plug run super cold in comparison to a normal plug tip. Cold plugs wet foul out much easier to not work on that cylinder, sound familiar??
 
Around here, you would have a hard time even finding a mechanic willing to take on a 40 year old bike. Most would straight up refuse.

The pricing you got seems to be a "f-off price". They don't really want to work on it, but also don't really want to outright tell you to pound sand. Old bikes are DIY, or you better have deep pockets, them's the breaks.

Quite honestly, were I a professional mechanic, I wouldn't want to work on this thing either. For myself, sure. I am doing this right now - see the "couldn't stay away" thread. In a shop where I have overhead and other customers? Hell no.

Think of it this way: what you need is not a "repair". You need a restoration. You are a decade behind on maintenance. You are missing parts that are likely only obtainable from eBay or someone like xschris. Even parts that are available, like fork seals and gaskets, are special order, and you have to wait to get them. The bike needs probably 10-12 hours of straight up work(maybe more), but because of the wait for the parts it will take up shop space for days or weeks. Space that can be used to run through a half-dozen paying customers with smaller and easier jobs. Sure, it feels good to get an old one back on the road, but shops don't work for feels. Feels don't pay the bills.

On a home project, the thing can sit as long as you like. Take your time, find the right parts, read the manual, ask questions. You got sentimental value here, so investing time makes sense.


The $180 they wanted to charge you... I don't know. Maybe they did spend a lot of time on it. I would chalk all this up to a learning experience and get to wrenching.
 
On their website they state that “we specifically work on bikes from the 70s and 80s”. It very easy to tell that they spent basically no time on this bike - hence why all the recommendations were mostly found by doing a visual inspection. I left several parts with them - a new throttle cable, a throttle cable bracket, new gaskets, new gas cap and a new petcock.

I understand that shops do not work for feels and I never want anything for free or discounted because of a personal situation. I didn’t even bring my story up to the shop at any time, I just brought it up on here so that it was understood why I cared so much about the bike.

I do not believe I need a restoration either. I provided them with multiple necessary parts that they were still going to charge me for. I removed rust from the gas tank, cleaned the carbs twice, rebuilt the card, replaced the fuse box, replaced the battery, replaced the air filters, oil change, new oil filter, etc. Their bill was definitely an f-off response- but why not just tell me up front and be honest instead of being passive aggressive child? I have put countless hours into this bike and went from knowing nothing about motorcycles to being able to complete all the work listed above. So really, it was a slap in the face to me because I have worked my a** off trying to get this thing running. I attached a few pictures on here of the bike. I understand that it does not show what’s going on in the inside - I would post a video of it running but I am not sure how to. There are definitely a few cosmetic things I need to take care of, but it has been stored inside and looks pretty good to me for a bike with that age, in my opinion (and that is comparing it to similar bikes listed on FB marketplace). Just wanted to show these pictures too because I think it demonstrates that it doesn’t need a full restoration.
 

Attachments

  • D17F30D1-526A-4370-BEDF-1D777AF474FD.jpeg
    D17F30D1-526A-4370-BEDF-1D777AF474FD.jpeg
    381.8 KB · Views: 201
  • D78287ED-FDD6-4FE5-8564-DC9C1F8E8E9E.jpeg
    D78287ED-FDD6-4FE5-8564-DC9C1F8E8E9E.jpeg
    317.8 KB · Views: 211
  • BEF46235-E700-4605-BA87-954DB9934390.jpeg
    BEF46235-E700-4605-BA87-954DB9934390.jpeg
    370.2 KB · Views: 197
I few things I see are the holes in the mufflers and the carbs look to be ones from a 82-84 DOHC xs400 bike that someone had made to fit. That will cause issues for tuning.
 
On their website they state that “we specifically work on bikes from the 70s and 80s”.

Hm. Perhaps they want caferacing hipsters only? Do you have a beard, and did you wear flannel?

I do not believe I need a restoration either.

It's a 40+ year old bike that was stored for a decade. Don't want to call it a restoration, fine. Call it a recommissioning. Still. You have to start with catching up on basic maintenance.

I provided them with multiple necessary parts that they were still going to charge me for.
I left several parts with them - a new throttle cable, a throttle cable bracket, new gaskets, new gas cap and a new petcock.
I don't really get this part. Gas cap and petcock are like two screws each. 10 minutes to replace. Why would you bring that in?

I removed rust from the gas tank, cleaned the carbs twice, rebuilt the card, replaced the fuse box, replaced the battery, replaced the air filters, oil change, new oil filter, etc.

Good start. Keep going. You can download a manual here. Start with maintenance section. Points, valves, maybe new ignition wires. New hoses. Rubber rots from age, indoors or out.

Also, if your forks are like they said, you definitely need a rebuild.

Their bill was definitely an f-off response- but why not just tell me up front and be honest instead of being passive aggressive child?
Some people are immature. Particularly people who run a hobby business.

There are definitely a few cosmetic things I need to take care of, but it has been stored inside and looks pretty good to me for a bike with that age, in my opinion (and that is comparing it to similar bikes listed on FB marketplace). Just wanted to show these pictures too because I think it demonstrates that it doesn’t need a full restoration.

Don't get stuck on that word. Bottom line, bike needs more work than you think. All old bikes do. You look at it, and you think "I'll have this knocked out in a day". And then you start, and one thing leads to another, and you are still wrenching three months later. It's not a knock on your skills, just a fact of life of a recreational motonecromancer.
 
I do have a beard and I did wear a flannel, along with my skinny jeans. I was also vaping when I pulled up if that helps you visualize it at all.....

I brought those parts in because I did not need them. I figured it was a nice gesture to give them parts that are typically hard to find.


And I never thought I’d have this bike knocked out in a day. It wasn’t anywhere close to running when I picked it up in June. I completed everything I listed above and was able to get it running about 3 weeks ago. I did not want to replace anything cosmetic, such as the mufflers, until I got it running btw.
 
I do have a beard and I did wear a flannel, along with my skinny jeans. I was also vaping when I pulled up if that helps you visualize it at all......
Maybe flannel pattern was wrong, and they took you for a warring clan... :D

That, or you haven't hacked up your bike to their liking.


I brought those parts in because I did not need them. I figured it was a nice gesture to give them parts that are typically hard to find..

I might do that sort of stuff, but only for the shop where I have been going for years. I think you might have given them too much benefit of the doubt.
 
I wouldn't have left parts behind, they very well may toss them in the trash if they haven't had one of those come into the shop before you. Just because they work on those years stuff; some bikes are pretty thinly spread and you don't see them even if you work on them. I had a Yamaha 305 and nobody even knew what it was when it had been out only 3 years.

Shops price things to where it becomes more viable to pay the charges if the bikes are bigger engines, the bike worth generally comes up with that to justify the work better, middleweights are often looked down on by shops. My Kaw shop in '74 looked down on my 400-3 when it was brand new like it was junk, they clearly did not want to work on it in anything approaching deeper work when I had my specific tuning issue and why they simply messed it up worse and put hot enough plugs in it to melt pistons. Brand new bike with a couple thousand miles on it, I was forced to fix it myself and so I did and better than them. I learned the real world difference in wide open throttle carb sync and off-idle sync and not even close to the same thing although some teaching methods of the day did not really point that out or even did it wrong. The Kaw shop did it wrong too.

Lastly, I again emphasize that when you go in with multiple issues that may well require a bike to come apart in various, ways, well, you are asking for it. They will immediately feel you out as to whether you are a moneybags and not finding it you get the cold shoulder. It's called survival. One has to recognize that the needs of a shop are often diametrically opposed to those of the bike owner when you dig deep enough.

X2 to pretty much everything in post #11.
 
Last edited:
Uh, if bike has E3 plugs in it GET RID OF THEM, that may be much of your issue.

E3 plugs are total trash, I used to sell them and nearly every single one came back as warranty, they are gimmick crap product. Countless cars went WAAAAYY bad when they switched to those. What the fancy airbrush artwork ads of a nuclear explosion doesn't show you is that with all the metal they have on the end both creates a mask to the spark and flame kernel as well as making the plug run super cold in comparison to a normal plug tip. Cold plugs wet foul out much easier to not work on that cylinder, sound familiar??
Is there a certain plug that you recommend? I got the E3 plugs because they were the only plugs that had a screw off top.
 
X2, get the correct heat range for the engine, the number part 6,7,8, whatever and the correct tip too, the S or the last letter. Any R means resistor and avoid that.

Looks like NGK BP-7ES there.
 
Back
Top