My Do-It-Yourself Car Repair

November 4, 2009 | Posted by Kristen

Car repair skills are not a terribly strong suit of mine (or my husband’s), but every now and then we do manage to save ourselves a ton of money by fixing something ourselves. Recently we had the opportunity to do just that, because one day when I walked outside to open our van door, the handle, which is made of plastic, broke right off.

space
Thankfully, that particular handle was for the sliding door, which meant that we could easily reach in through the front door and open the sliding door from the inside. This was especially fortunate because the handle broke right before vacation, and we had to open the sliding door using alternate means the whole time we were away. It would have been far more aggravating to deal with a broken front door for two weeks.

There’s always a bright side, isn’t there?

Anyways, after the handle broke, I called around to see how much a new handle would cost. Toyota was willing to sell me a color-matched handle for a mere $160. Yikes. How exactly you can charge $160 for a plastic door handle and keep a straight face is sort of beyond me.

Toyota also graciously offered to install this $160 door handle for just $100 more. Whee! The dealership is just the best place to get parts and service, isn’t it??

Riiight. Instead of scheduling an appointment with the dealership, I hopped onto the internet and found that a primed black door handle could be purchased for $30. That’s more like it. Of course, if I owned a white van or a blue van or really, any van that wasn’t black, this wouldn’t have worked too well. But, joy of joys, mine is black, so the primed handle matches just fine.

When the part arrived, my husband and I consulted our handy-dandy Haynes manual (if you need help with a do-it-yourself car repair, this is a great tool to have!) to learn how to take the door apart.

It turns out that we just had to pop the plastic off the inside of the door, unscrew the old handle, screw in the new one, attach it to the power-lock system, and put the plastic back onto the door. Easy-peasy (especially since my husband did most of the work!). I think it took all of about 15 minutes.

And considering that we managed to spend $30 on this project instead of $260, I think the time spent on this do-it-yourself car repair was more than worth it!

This post is derived from an original post on The Frugal Girl.
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Kristen blogs about saving money cheerfully at The Frugal Girl. In addition to being a life-long devotee of frugality, she’s a photography nut, a baker, a homeschooler, a musician, and more importantly, a wife and mom who loves God.

Categories: car repair | Tags: do-it-yourself car repair, self reliance | No Comments »