Water pump -- would you do the job again, or take to a shop?

[Road1]

Those of you who have done the water pump job yourself, would you do it again, or just take it to a shop? And how much would you consider the most that you would pay? For that matter, what price is low enough that you would NOT do it yourself?

I usually do my own work, but I'm getting old, and there's not a lot of room to work in there.

At the same time, I'm a cheapskate. But I'm seeing guys talking about 10 hours of work to do it . . .that would be more than I've done for a single repair job in years, so I'm torn. I've gone through the step-by-step and looked at a couple of videos, and I'm pretty sure that I can do it, but not sure that I want to hog all of that fun to myself.

One shop not far from me is quoting $1300 labor, drive-in/drive-out, plus a FoMoCo pump for $195. The timing chain wasn't part of the quote, but I would have that added, probably at a similar markup.

 

[Odrapnew]

I would do it again myself since I learned some of the ins/outs of the process and because I'm also cheap.
It would need to be less than $1000 all in if I were to pay someone to do it.

I've only done it once, but I will say it took me close to 15 hours total with I think at least 1 hr just f'n around with the damn spring clamps and coolant hoses that were pretty much glued to the intake.

 

[Turdle]

Wish I would have bought a spring clamp tool before I did. With the tool you own the clamp.

Just throwing that in.