arse_sidewards
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So paying someone to do brakes on all 4 corners just costs $1k these days.
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jimmy123456789
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That’s the way it goes, not uncommon to see brake jobs at $400-500+ per axle between the cost of the pads, rotors (cheap parts store Chinese garbage in most cases) and the labor of doing the job, depending on the vehicle such as doing rear inboard rotors on a 1 ton Chevy that requires pressing the studs out, or just your average Honda Civic that’s a walk in the park.
It’s vital especially with these poorly made rotors to make sure the hub surface is clean and the rotor isn’t sitting uneven from rust causing lateral runout (pulsation). Fixed many recently done brake jobs where “the brakes still shake” and come to find they beat the old rotors off and nearly forced the new ones one due to rust on the hubs…
One shop I worked at had us turn all rotors, old and new, with the on car brake lathe to ensure the rotors were cut matching the hub runout and minimizing comebacks. We got 2 hours per axle for that in most cases. Truth be told I’d rather turn an OE rotor than install some of these parts store garbage ones.
Ahhh but the general public only cares about a lower price and “Hurr durr make it cheaper” has led to SO much aftermarket junk. Meanwhile the shop just wants the customer to be happy and not be back in 6 months because the rotors are warped again…
2big bronco
Og irate
$80 for .3hrs isnt to bad
Agreed. I turned rotors when I worked at our local Fisher's/Federated parts store in the '90s. I had several mechanics at several shops that would only send rotors to us if I was there to turn them. The other yahoos would be sitting there watching the rotor spin making all kinds of noise leaving nice psychedelic swirl patterns on the rotor from the vibration. I mounted mine properly and turned them with no noise and finished them off with some 220 grit sand paper on a block to give them a nice finish that would still bed the pads in without eating them up.
Now drums are another story. Some drums were impossible to turn. either they had hard spots in them or something, but they didn't want to turn quiet no matter what I tried.
Our shop will turn rotors occasionally, usually used cars that sales doesn't want to sink money in. We charge a flat rate for tuning them rather than normal labor rate, so it's cheaper, but still hard to beat new chinesium rotors made out of potmetal.
arse_sidewards
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Tacodriver
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Had the cooling fins in the front rotors on a Prius rust out before they showed enough wear to replace. Rotors looked mint just looking through the wheel.
Lbhsbz
Toyota Fag
In reality, you have this backwards.
jimmy123456789
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jimmy123456789 I wanna know how you feel about this one.
I can’t see why they’d need to replace pads all around for one seized caliper… sounds like bullshit to me. Replace the pads on the axle that went bad and the bad caliper, charge for a caliper replacement and be done. Depending on the customer, the shop can either warranty the set of pads with the parts store or make the customer pay, depending on what the fault was and how big of an ass the customer is about it
Why did it seize up? Slider freeze up because it wasn’t lubed or was it the caliper itself? Or a restricted brake hose…
arse_sidewards
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Are we talking service life or performance?
IDGAF if I chew through china ceramic pads in 6mo.
But I want my rotor to be pretty true.
Roc Doc
2A SNBI
Not me, I want to pay the most!
Lbhsbz
Toyota Fag
I've tested both runout and disc thickness variation on thousands of new rotors from all quality levels from the cheapest oil-sand cast shit to $10K carbon ceramic 2 piece rotors...and I can count on one hand the amount that had any concerning amount of runout. I also designed and built the fixtures to perform the testing.
99% of vibration/judder issues are related to the rotor not sitting flat on the hub, bent hub, or uneven wheel torque which can create a runout condition, or choosing shit pads that have shit friction transfer characteristics or pads not of a suitable temp range for the driving style/conditions.
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AKnate
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I had my F350 for what I thought was a trans rebuild, ended up being the speedometer computer (forget the name now)
I had them take a look at the rear brakes as I didn't have time and it was already there.
Shoes had unglued, new shoes and drums.
Picked it up and didn't feel right. Took it back and got told they needed to seat.
Fast forward to this summer, maybe 500 miles on the truck since the brakes.
I bring the truck to the house to put some wind in an inner tire, which turns into pulling it to get patched.
Notice drum is damp.
Pull it off and it looks like someone put a few tubes of black grease in there. One shoe worn almost through. Adjusters were seized on both sides.
Fuckers slammed new brakes on it, never adjusted them right and ignored that it needed hub seals.
They pretty much told me tough shit, fuck off even though they allegedly have a year warranty on their work. Could maybe see if I'd put 10k miles or something, but 500?
Chaps my ass i paid hard earned money for a complete shit job.
May as well just DIY, not much a guy can't figure out with reading the service books or youtube.
I had them take a look at the rear brakes as I didn't have time and it was already there.
Shoes had unglued, new shoes and drums.
Picked it up and didn't feel right. Took it back and got told they needed to seat.
Fast forward to this summer, maybe 500 miles on the truck since the brakes.
I bring the truck to the house to put some wind in an inner tire, which turns into pulling it to get patched.
Notice drum is damp.
Pull it off and it looks like someone put a few tubes of black grease in there. One shoe worn almost through. Adjusters were seized on both sides.
Fuckers slammed new brakes on it, never adjusted them right and ignored that it needed hub seals.
They pretty much told me tough shit, fuck off even though they allegedly have a year warranty on their work. Could maybe see if I'd put 10k miles or something, but 500?
Chaps my ass i paid hard earned money for a complete shit job.
May as well just DIY, not much a guy can't figure out with reading the service books or youtube.
DMG
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You only really feel rust spots or thickness variation in the pedal. A little runout on something with a floating caliper isnt noticeable.
Lbhsbz
Toyota Fag
Not initially, but it will turn into an uneven surface condition/thickness variation down the road.
If I put a rotor on a car and use a dial indicator to phase match it to the clean hub and get runout down to effectively zero, then use an appropriate friction compound, that rotor will provide smooth braking for 100K miles (in an area where rust is not an issue). If I put that same rotor on with a shims over a couple studs to induce .010" of runout, it will be smooth as silk for 5K miles or so, and then a judder will start to develop. This is not a warped rotor, and was not originally a problem with the rotor....and while the rotor is now fucked, it's not the rotor's fault that it's fucked, was my point.
Johnny Longrifle
Slow learner
Ya except I would be paid 1.5 for that brake job. My speed and proficiency of turning a 1.5 job into .3 is for my benefit, and my benefit only.
Which brake supplier do you work for?
I have had three sets of NAPA "ultra premium" or wtfever rotors in the last month that shook worse than the ones I took off. Second guessing my work I brought the cars back in and re-inspected everything, including taking dial indicator measurement of the hubs. Hubs were true, the shit NAPA rotors were out .007" on the small end, and I had to machine BRAND FUCKING NEW, GUARANTEED NO MACHINING NEEDED (says right on the box) ROTORS.
Even NAPA has sold out to Chyna, and everything we get is shit.
Lbhsbz
Toyota Fag
Centric Parts...up until about 2020 when they were purchased...ironically by the same company who owns Raybestos (and now Cardone) that supplies rotors to NAPA lol.
Pretty much every aftermarket rotor (regardless of who's label is on it) has come out of China for the last 20 years...and before that too. There are some very good ones coming out of china...best I've seen actually. There is also crap. It has to do with who's running the company that's buying them and their level of understanding of anything.
Here's a story...not brake related but another product line from a brake company with the same bunch of dipshit engineers at the helm...
We bought a company about 10 or so years ago, maybe more, that supplied rotors and drums to autozone/oreilly/pep-boys/etc....white boxes, only difference was the label. They also supplied a decent amount of the chain house brand chassis program (ball joints, tie rod ends, etc)...which I became involved with after I discovered it was shit. Now, this place was all ISO and whatever other certs made them look good. I discovered some problems with a few ball joints, and was sent test results from when they had an independent lab run some tests per an autozoo requirement the year prior. This was a ball joint that when installed, was loaded such a manner that the ball stud was always forced INTO the cup, NEVER OUT. The ball joint in use also had about 6 degrees of articulation possible from center. Each test of 250K cycles cost us somewhere in the neighborhood of $40K, and there about 2 tests per part number per supplier...call it 3 suppliers per part. We also tested OEM parts and competitor (MOOG) to see how we stacked up. These were SAE standard tests, which the test protocol calls out for the test engineer to take the design application into consideration to design the tests/fixturing/determine the loads.
All the cycle tests were performed unloaded
They did a "push out" test where they tried to force the ball stud through the forged housing
They did a "pull out" test where they pulled the ball stud out of the housing
They did a "cam out" test to see how much articulation they could get before it broke
I forget the last one.
Anyway, they couldn't push the fucking ball stud out because it was in a solid forged housing
The pull out test was fucking stupid and a waste of $40K x however many of that part number we tested because the joint would NEVER see loads in that direction
The cam out test went to 20° or so and was also stupid because it was not possible to move it more than 6° in use.
The cycle tests were stupid because they didn't load the parts to simulate the weight of the vehicle.
The ENTIRE fucking engineering dept at this place that we'd just bought could not understand why I was losing my shit over them having wasted about a million dollars accomplishing fuck all. All they could say was "those were the tests Autozoo wanted". Nobody ever thought to maybe educate the rest of the people involved that the tests were pointless, and just did them because they're too stupid to realize it themselves.
"Engineer" in a manufacturing environment often times means the person is sort of qualified to measure a part with a set of harbor freight calipers and make sure it matches a shitty basic dimensional print. Nobody knows why the prints are toleranced the way they are or cares, or knows enough to care. A few get it, but it's rare.
These are the kind of people that run modern companies in many cases, and that's why everything is shit. Not because of China.
Lbhsbz
Toyota Fag
I can tell you this...Every brake rotor that's coming out of First Brands comes out of a factory called Haimung, which Raybestos owned prior to the First Brands acquisition. I'm not sure if this data is still accurate, but they used to supply most of Napa, Motorcraft, ACDelco, and a few others I can't remember right now. They have Centric now as well. All the rotors in all those boxes are all the same rotor....the only thing that's different is the paint and the box it comes in. Doesn't matter if it's the economy line or the super duper ultra premium line...same fucking part, different color.
Raybestos owns friction factories in India and Mexico...and all the calipers (centric, cardone, raybestos, ACDelco and all the private label products...brake best, Napa Eclipse, a lot of OE stuff, etc...) is all coming out of one plant in Mexico that was put together by a couple of dumb shit MBAs we hired and it was a disaster...and still is. They hire workers every monday because so many of them don't make it through the week. There is no knowledge left in that building of WTF to do and how to do it, which is why they suck.
The next logical move to save money and skirt tariffs is to move rotor manufacturing to India, since they already have a presence there. There are plenty of youtube videos about how they make rotors in India and the middle east.
Raybestos owns friction factories in India and Mexico...and all the calipers (centric, cardone, raybestos, ACDelco and all the private label products...brake best, Napa Eclipse, a lot of OE stuff, etc...) is all coming out of one plant in Mexico that was put together by a couple of dumb shit MBAs we hired and it was a disaster...and still is. They hire workers every monday because so many of them don't make it through the week. There is no knowledge left in that building of WTF to do and how to do it, which is why they suck.
The next logical move to save money and skirt tariffs is to move rotor manufacturing to India, since they already have a presence there. There are plenty of youtube videos about how they make rotors in India and the middle east.
Leadfoot21
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Man, sometimes you all make it really hard to believe this is an automotive centered platform . Very difficult to read the lack of knowledge and understanding sometimes .
Number one automotive safety priority is clearly your braking system . Brake work carry’s a large liability . Brakes (rotors/pads) have always been 2 hours flat rate per axle standard without referencing book time , used to get another half hour to apply anti-squeal per axle add additional time for electronic assist parking brake caliper calibrations, those that require scan tools to detract, etc.
Since labor rates are now routinely $250 an hour at the dealer and 150-200 for independent shops it’s very easy to hit $1000 in labor without parts or any additional preventative maintenance found upon inspection .
Welcome to reality folks . Job security for those of us in the industry , we will always have food on the table .
Number one automotive safety priority is clearly your braking system . Brake work carry’s a large liability . Brakes (rotors/pads) have always been 2 hours flat rate per axle standard without referencing book time , used to get another half hour to apply anti-squeal per axle add additional time for electronic assist parking brake caliper calibrations, those that require scan tools to detract, etc.
Since labor rates are now routinely $250 an hour at the dealer and 150-200 for independent shops it’s very easy to hit $1000 in labor without parts or any additional preventative maintenance found upon inspection .
Welcome to reality folks . Job security for those of us in the industry , we will always have food on the table .
Johnny Longrifle
Slow learner
Thank you for spelling out what I was already sure of.
Now here is the rub. Brakes used to be 2 hrs an axle, and mechanics could flat rate them out in .75 or less. Because we are fucking good at what we do, and you can't.
Now, we have to grab a $8500 scan tool, connect to the car and electronically retract the calipers. Thats if they aren't rusted and fucked.
You fuckin service writers still pay us the same 1.5, which works out to $80 in my payroll, which I then have to give 40% to uncle Sam. So I'm left with $48 cash.
48 fucking dollars to fix the most important safety feature of your automobile.
Get fukt
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arse_sidewards
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And I was going to correct Jimmy to this tune as well but fuck it.
Delete the little stainless pieces and the pads will never stick at the expense of some rattle you can hear at low speeds with windows down.
Yeah but it'll do a pretty good job un-fucking itself with time once you fix whatever was causing the runout.
I fucked up a rotor real good that way with a loose wheel bearing. Replaced the bearing and the rotor took a few months of shaking but it's fine now.
I feel more comfortable getting airborne knowing that there is a test and that if it just popped out with negligible force Autozone wouldn't sell it.
But this is the same sort of blinders on dumbass engineer thinking you're complaining about
Just because it can only move 6deg normally doesn't mean I want my wheel falling off after I send it a little too hard, bend something and the joint is now moving in the range of 5deg +/-6 rather than 0deg +/-6
Fuck right off into the box car and then the shower with that Reddit shit.
Everything is safety related to an extent. Brake systems are pretty resilant and aren't gonna stop doing their thing because of poor service. They tend to make absurd noise and deposit metal dust around the vehicle when not serviced properly.
I hope you get replaced with national conglomerates that hire people for min-wage.
Kinda like how local business got replaced with Walmart and everyone who's income wasn't predicated on that waste became able to afford more material wealth in the process.
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Leadfoot21
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Sounds like you need a better service writer , they should take care of you .
Arse, go eat a snickers . Brakes ARE the biggest safety item and are extremely important . What you said is ignorant and I’m certainly not a Reddit person . You spend too much time online .
To the second part you ran with that one out there in left field . The technicians as clearly outlined in this thread aren’t getting rich off this work , but being a mechanic is job security or being in the automotive industry in general . The average Joe doesn’t know how to tie their shoes anymore . I’ve never made too much money but I know I will always have a paycheck .
WTF?
degenerate at large
The astronomical amount that people who can’t turn a wrench pay for a brake job has always been jaw dropping to me ever since I first recall hearing someone say what they cost somewhere around the late 90’s (3-400/ axle in pre clownworld bucks)
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arse_sidewards
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I don't disagree but that does not earn them the pants on head retarded treatment that you and many others (particularly on Reddit, I like to think we're smarter here) give them.
You people act the way upper class housewives act about car seats. It's completely over the top and unnecessary.
It was a little over the top but I do think many look forward to the day when auto repair is performed with the consistency that you get from McDonald's or Walmart.
Priest
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My Mustang has 15" rotors with 6 piston Brembos in the front. The good rotors are $250-300 a pair. The OEM one's are actually best, much better alloy. I have two sets and have had them turned.
Leadfoot21
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I would disagree , I think you may not be giving it enough respect . I’m not over the top about it I’m a good old country boy … driven many a brake less truck over the years on the farm etc . However , when I am assuring your families safety and that of others it’s completely different .
I don’t think that will ever happen, it isn’t an easy business and with each passing day independent shops get fewer and farther between . Finding solid technicians is very difficult .
WTF?
degenerate at large
Priest
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Yeah, my track buddies that have german cars always buy their lifetime warranty brake parts from FCP Euro "They aren't the best pads and rotors, but I'll warranty a set ever year".
arse_sidewards
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So we've established that "family" is the magic word that turns you into a retard.
While that's different than "safety" or "brakes" being the magic word like it is for a lot of people it's not necessarily an upgrade either.