I think that's a fair estimate, assuming a shop rate of $125/hour plus parts. It's a pretty big job. To get the timing chain and tensioner out, you have to remove the oil pan, which is a PITA on these trucks if it's 4WD or AWD. And, most shops like to take the whole front differential out because that's what the book says. But in reality, all you need to do is remove the passenger side diff mounting bolts and the axle shaft bolts, and let it hang down, along with the steering rack mounts, and the frame crossmember. That gives just enough clearance to get the oil pan off, and also saves a good 2-3 hours of shop time. Before all of that though, the radiator, fans, power steering pump pulley, tensioners, belts, water pump, and the harmonic balancer have to all come out so that's a big chunk of the time, too.Update - I didn't have time over the last week or so to deal with this myself so I took to a local shop who has done work on this vehicle in the past. The tech who normally works on this old piece of iron was not in and another tech looked at it. Diagnosed a bad timing chain/tensioner.
His bid to fix was $1,800.00 which seems to be quite high. What would you guys expect a reasonable price to be to do this job?
Thanks,
Tim
+1 to what Wes said too. It's worth changing that cam position sensor as step 1. The tensioner itself seems an unlikely root cause for this because all it does is just keep the chain from flapping around. There isn't enough slack in the chain to allow it to jump time even without the tensioner, unless the chain is seriously stretched, which I doubt. It's not like an OHC engine where you have several feet of timing chain to stretch. On these engines you have about an inch between the cam and crank sprockets, so there just isn't enough chain to stretch appreciably.
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