Well he just charged me $400 to fix a wire.
I've charged a lot more than that to fix a wire. Fixing the wire only took 15-20 minutes. Finding the right wire to fix and figuring out what was pulling the 5v reference in the PCM down to where it wouldn't start was an entirely different matter.
That took some time to go over all the harnesses and find out where the problem is. I've also worked on one for over 40 hours trying to find out why the monitors wouldn't run and no one out of the 20 folks who are experts at smog and PCM's could even begin to point us in any direction that was the key to an answer. Be glad you didn't need to get that one past smog. The owner was as bad as you are though.
He couldn't fix it, the 3 shops he took it to before me couldn't fix it, the 2 dealerships they sent it to couldn't fix it. He spent 4 months trying to get it fixed before he threw in the towel and brought it to me.
I told him when he dropped it off if we couldn't fix it, no charge. If we got it fixed and past smog, he pays full pop. He paid but was not the tiniest bit happy about it and this is his "I'm going to be buried in this thing" rig. Guess who doesn't work on his rig any more?