Rear end work, hours labor?

depends on how skilled the technician is, lowest possible is probably like 2 hours.

edit- IDK if you have ever worked in a autoshop, but its kinda luck of the draw, the veteran auto guru might work on it or the rookie UTI graduate or the old disgruntaled employee....with a bad back, haha, so he's pissed and can give two sht's about your car

If you look at my signature, you will notice that rear gears are up at the top of my to-do list. Where they have been since I bought the car. "Why?" you ask.

Well, because I refuse to pay 6.5 hours to 8 hours for labor to do said swap. Now, I don't know what things are like out in Oregon, but I am just having an incredibly difficult time finding someone to do my gears for what I consider to be a reasonable price. And the billing is the main thing. I know for a fact that a skilled technician can do this job in 2 to 3 hours. They have told me that. But, they then proceed to tell me that the book calls for twice that amount of time, if not more. Which they insist on billing me for. Thus, my problem...

Of course, this is just the people who have the decency to return calls. We won't go into a discussion about shops that hang up when you call or do not return the three messages you have left for them...

So, I guess what I am saying is that it seems to be becoming, for me at least, more and more difficult to find a mechanic that bills for time spent as opposed to "the job." Maybe this is just the way things are now and I will have to deal with it, but don't be surprised to find that if you take it somewhere the labor time will seem dramatically higher than you might have anticipated.

FWIW, labor here is at least $50 an hour at a shop (unless you are trying to find a rear-end guy, who all seem to charge a premium around me).

So, I guess I am saying that your experience with what this costs is probably going to be at least partially unique to your location and the local mechanic environment. The best thing I can think of to get yourself a reasonable idea of what it will cost you is to just start calling around. Or, if you have a mechanic that you are reasonably comfortable with at a local shop, why not talk to him? Go to the place where he works and ask for him, and then just be incredibly blunt. "What would you charge to do this for me outside of the shop?" Maybe he is willing, maybe not. If it is self-owned, he probably won''t be willing to do it. But, the guys at the dealership / chains seem a little more willing to pick up a little "side-work" in my experience.

All that being said, I would guess that you are looking at a good half-day (4 hours) bill for the job, if not a bit more.

You can also just buy a whole rear end that already has 3.73s or 4.10s, probably cheaper in the long run, and its a very simple job