I do most of my own work on my cars. Our daily driver is a 99 sonata gls. A little piece went out in the gas line, kind of a valve that when broken doesn't allow the car to keep running if your filling it will gas. Then after you fill the car with gas you can't restart it for 15 minutes..
I can't think of the exact name for the piece off the top of my head but the dealer wanted 600 bucks to fix it. The cars BOOK VALUE is 2k! So I did some research on it, bought the part for 5 bucks and it literally took less than 5 minutes to pull the old part and put the new part on... simply a matter of disconnecting the fuel lines from the old one ( right on top and on the rear of the engine, simple to reach) by pinching the connectors and then putting the new part in it's place.
Um... so what was the 600 dollar quote for? I called them out on it also and filed a complaint with Hyundai over it.
same with other things... had the air con compressor go out... again 600 bucks for the part alone. Got it after market for 100 bucks new, and local shop I used charged me 50 bucks to install it and recharge my system. (Course I live in butt fuck no where and that local shops a junk yard but treats people great!.) I let them take care of the bigger stuff I don't feel like dealing with and they have saved me a ton of money over the years.
My daily drivers a 97 Landrover Discovery that I just bought last week. I've already started the redo of it. It only has 88k original miles on it and I'm having custom build headers made for it that should be done this week. a chip to tell the ECU that the OS sensors are there.. even though they will be removed and no Cats. Putting a 2 inch suspension lift and bigger tires. Then it's on to the winch bumper, underbody protection etc.