Hoxey’s Transmission Service

You are probably reading this (and considering Hoxey’s) if you have an elderly car with very low book value but you want to keep it around for another 30K, so you are thinking heavy thoughts about replacing a transmission. Which will be quoted at $ 3200 – 3500 in town for a ten year old car worth $ 2000. Most shops will only use an expensive official rebuild because transmissions are time intensive and tie up the shop, not an everyday repair, and make them a weensy bit nervous.
Tow truck drivers are excellent sources of information on where to take your car for major work. They also know valuable and interesting anecdotal data like how many Priuses they haul a month for engine burnout at $ 5000 per repair (that one is definitely off my new car shopping list). His tow company has one of the plush city towing contracts and takes ownership of cars when people run up triple-​digit impound fees and ditch rather than pay. The cleanup transmission work goes to Hoxey’s and my driver had taken his own car to Hoxey’s. «Honest, fast, extremely reasonable, won’t do an iffy repair, really knows what he’s doing, nothing but transmissions.»
If you are willing to buy a used trans online, ship it to Hoxey’s, and you succeed in transporting the car to Pinckney for a sum which is less than the remaining value of the car, you will pay less than a third of what you will be quoted everywhere else. Craigslist always has people advertising truck and trailer services to hustle some side income. Or this can be the One Huge Favor you extract from your friend with pickup and trailer ball, which you need to connect to the UHaul trailer, which you can rent in town.
I am ignorant about car viscera beyond locating the major parts near the top, checking and adding oil, filling up red and blue. I personally shopped my own transmission. Between telephone consults with Dave Hoxey and my Bro the Pro auto engineer, I was able to find one online with only 45K miles for $ 325 and ship it to Hoxey’s for $ 75. Dave Hoxey took a look at my used trans, found a small crack, called the seller and haggled over it, and then said he would handle the small crack and would warrant the final job, with the seller arranging separately to pay Hoxey if the crack caused a repair after installation. I got an extra long six-​month warranty from the used parts seller and I paid Hoxey $ 500 to put it in. Bro the Pro says a used trans will either fail within 30 days or go on to last a reasonable lifespan and he was impressed that I had found such a good shop. Note, Hoxey’s is actually off M-​59 on the way to Pinckney.
(BTW Naylor quoted $ 1400 labor, $ 3400 Mopar rebuild, 2 – 3 weeks, I took that as a cosmic effin «just go away please» but maybe that was actually a quote.)