hey guys and gals i have been toying with the idea of doing local repairs for people as a business do you guys think it is a good idea ? if it would acually turn profits ? what kind of price could i charge and what kind of services could i offer any input would be great thanks Tim

All my lhs's and previous ones charged $20 an hour. You could charge $15 or so to beat the others.I think if you got enough people and got in a good area you could definetely have a good business. You could do break ins, repairs, etc.

Well first off, when people get their cars repaired, they want you to turn a broken car into a working car. They will not want to order parts and then have you replace them once the parts arrive. They just want to hand a broken car to you and get a working one in return, so you would need a wholesale parts supplier. People also want their old worn out cars fixed, I see tons of people turned away from my lhs because the parts for the car they have are no longer made.

Well I was looking on Craigslist and there was a guy who wrote. "Wanted...Hpi Savage expert needed". So I anwsered it and the guy had 3 Savages that need repairs.
He was a strait up White collar worker and has no wrench time under his belt. He came came into my garage with 4 plastic bins full of savages... to sum it up.
Two were ez fixes and had them up and running in like 20 mins... (slipper clutch). the last one he snapped the bulk head....no big deal for me! Plus he wanted me to show
him how things come apart on them, so he can learn..... I charged him 40 bucks. He was like " that's all u want".....I said I'm not looking to make a mint of people.
Well not sure if that helps or not but put an add on Craigslist and work out the price as u go... Good luck.

It can, you charge $30/hr or so for 'labor'. But the problem is that if you are competing with a shop, the shop is making a profit on both parts and labor while you only make money on the labor. So it's hard to compete really, unless you can offer something that the shop doesn't.

Yeah, you can really only make enough to be a small supplemental income. If you want to make a living doing repairs you will pretty much need a hobby shop to work out of, selling new cars and parts to keep a constant customer base revolving.