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So paying someone to do brakes on all 4 corners just costs $1k these days.

94toytruck said:
I often suspected that's another reason for it. If it doesn't work it's flashing and errors on the dash. I haven't seen many electronic e-brakes that come in not working vs. mechanical.
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Most of the electronic ones get cycled when the vehicle gets put in park. Between that, the little motor being inside a sealed plastic housing and then using the service brake as the park brake they don't seize up like cable brakes have a propensity to do.
 
arse_sidewards said:
People who will drive on the pad backer will drive without an inspection sticker.
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Some will. A lot of people know their car gets inspected in July and just defer everything until July and expect a big bill. Rule followers that don’t know anything about cars and just turn up the radio when their car makes noise.
 
94toytruck said:
I often suspected that's another reason for it. If it doesn't work it's flashing and errors on the dash. I haven't seen many electronic e-brakes that come in not working vs. mechanical.
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An electric ebrake is always adjusted and doesn’t have cables to get rusty and stick on. I am generally not a fan of shit like this but the electric parking brake on my F150 works great. It even disengages if you put it in gear and touch the gas.
 
the motor-calipers I can see the value in
the subaru cable-yanker-box I don't really like, seems overly complex

The motor calipers are also really easy to do brakes on, you just unbolt the motor and wind back the internal screw with a screwdriver, wind it back when you reassemble after pumping the brakes and the computer don't know the difference.
reset the pad life with the autel chinkanese code reader and hey presto
 
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[486] said:
the motor-calipers I can see the value in
the subaru cable-yanker-box I don't really like, seems overly complex

The motor calipers are also really easy to do brakes on, you just unbolt the motor and wind back the internal screw with a screwdriver, wind it back when you reassemble after pumping the brakes and the computer don't know the difference.
reset the pad life with the autel chinkanese code reader and hey presto
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I have had to fix a bunch of cars where people removed the motor and wound the caliper back in. It wouldn’t work and had the dash lit up like a Christmas tree until I reset the module and took it in and out of service mode several times. Multiple fords and a Toyota.
 
Fords have a sequence of buttons and key cycles to wind the motors back on their own, I'd imagine the others do too.
 
DMG said:
I have had to fix a bunch of cars where people removed the motor and wound the caliper back in. It wouldn’t work and had the dash lit up like a Christmas tree until I reset the module and took it in and out of service mode several times. Multiple fords and a Toyota.
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Some use a simple servo motor, some use a 3 phase (brushless) motor with an encoder for position. There is a reason the service info doesn't say to pull the motor off and wind the piston in...but wants you to use a scanner instead.
 
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DMG said:
I have had to fix a bunch of cars where people removed the motor and wound the caliper back in. It wouldn’t work and had the dash lit up like a Christmas tree until I reset the module and took it in and out of service mode several times. Multiple fords and a Toyota.
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all of them I've done so far have been two fat wires to the motor, meaning no position sensing, just a brushed DC motor and monitoring amperage draw

good to know they make them more complicated than that now
 
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[486] said:
the subaru cable-yanker-box I don't really like, seems overly complex
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You'll be pleased to hear that they use the red brake light for faults in the system so you have no idea if it's complaining about your parking brake or if you pissed all your fluid out a rusted line.
 
[486] said:
all of them I've done so far have been two fat wires to the motor, meaning no position sensing, just a brushed DC motor and monitoring amperage draw

good to know they make them more complicated than that now
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I bet if they spin for X number of seconds without an amp spike, even those will get confused
 
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just spent and unreasonable amount on brakes, yet again.

Not particularly interested in digging into why just the inside pad on the passenger side is metal on metal when the other 3 pads are nearer 50% life. As such, doing more of a "shop" style throw all the parts at it. Calipers, hoses, rotos & pads. Bearings are probably ok, but if not, i'll add those once it's all apart.

$400 for just the front half of hard parts for a damned 30 year old ford :shaking:

1716777747340.png
 
Provience said:
just spent and unreasonable amount on brakes, yet again.

Not particularly interested in digging into why just the inside pad on the passenger side is metal on metal when the other 3 pads are nearer 50% life. As such, doing more of a "shop" style throw all the parts at it. Calipers, hoses, rotos & pads. Bearings are probably ok, but if not, i'll add those once it's all apart.

$400 for just the front half of hard parts for a damned 30 year old ford :shaking:

1716777747340.png
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I would avoid Centric and Cardone these days.
 
Lbhsbz said:
I would avoid Centric and Cardone these days.
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Cardone doesn’t seem any worse than before, but yeah Centric seems to have gone to shit.


Brake jobs are a pita now. Compounds changed and everything fucking squeaks.
 
Provience said:
well that's lame. Centric used to be not great, but decent enough to be the top of the cheap-o brands.
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An outfit called the First Brands Group bought Raybestos back in early 2020ish...then came in and bought Centric in December of 2020 (I'd worked for Centric since 2003)....They fired about everyone the 3 days before Christmas in 2020, then another round in a month and 1/2, then my round came in May. I went out on my own doing caliper components, rebuild kits, and restoration level rebuilt calipers for early porsche and british stuff. They bought Carlson (the hardware kit/caliper rebuild kit/piston people) in Jan of 2022, and bought Cardone recently as well. Everything is consolidated as far as manufacturing goes...only difference is the boxes at this point. All the calipers from Centric, Raybestos, Cardone, and all the private lable brands they service come out of the same building, rotors all come out of the same plant, pads all come out of one of the 2 plants raybestos owned in India, Mexico, and some overflow out of China.

Had they retained anyone with a functioning brain for technical stuff, or any knowledge about what it is we did there, I would have a different opinion of them....but they didn't. Without any consideration as to what anyone did, knew, their skills, etc...they came in and canned all the mid range guys, then the high dollar guys, then basically everybody. They have nothing but idiot MBAs running the place who have no idea what they're doing...which is why I avoid them like the plague.

Example...they don't pay bills, and the caliper plant (which was moved to Juarez Mexico) ran out of caliper assembly lube...so the lead plant engineer substituted hydraulic oil which they could source cheap locally. EPDM rubber, which is what we use in brake systems, reacts with hydrocarbon based oils....they did that for 3 weeks before we were made aware of it and refused to pull back the product. They were doing about 8K calipers/day at that point. No recall, no nothing. They just don't care.
 
Lbhsbz said:
An outfit called the First Brands Group bought Raybestos back in early 2020ish...then came in and bought Centric in December of 2020 (I'd worked for Centric since 2003)....They fired about everyone the 3 days before Christmas in 2020, then another round in a month and 1/2, then my round came in May. I went out on my own doing caliper components, rebuild kits, and restoration level rebuilt calipers for early porsche and british stuff. They bought Carlson (the hardware kit/caliper rebuild kit/piston people) in Jan of 2022, and bought Cardone recently as well. Everything is consolidated as far as manufacturing goes...only difference is the boxes at this point. All the calipers from Centric, Raybestos, Cardone, and all the private lable brands they service come out of the same building, rotors all come out of the same plant, pads all come out of one of the 2 plants raybestos owned in India, Mexico, and some overflow out of China.

Had they retained anyone with a functioning brain for technical stuff, or any knowledge about what it is we did there, I would have a different opinion of them....but they didn't. Without any consideration as to what anyone did, knew, their skills, etc...they came in and canned all the mid range guys, then the high dollar guys, then basically everybody. They have nothing but idiot MBAs running the place who have no idea what they're doing...which is why I avoid them like the plague.

Example...they don't pay bills, and the caliper plant (which was moved to Juarez Mexico) ran out of caliper assembly lube...so the lead plant engineer substituted hydraulic oil which they could source cheap locally. EPDM rubber, which is what we use in brake systems, reacts with hydrocarbon based oils....they did that for 3 weeks before we were made aware of it and refused to pull back the product. They were doing about 8K calipers/day at that point. No recall, no nothing. They just don't care.
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:laughing: that's fuckin' wild!

and also fairly recent so I don't feel so bad for being out of the loop.
 
Takotruckin said:
Cardone doesn’t seem any worse than before, but yeah Centric seems to have gone to shit.


Brake jobs are a pita now. Compounds changed and everything fucking squeaks.
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i bought about 5 sets of some cardone calipers from Rock Auto a few months ago for a BMW because they were $30 each with a $3 core deposit and my customer needed some....I figured at this price, it's about what I normally pay my core vendor, but at least the pistons should be good (My piston supplier had backordered me for the last 3 months and I had like 2 left).....I was wrong. Not only were all the pistons fucked...most were the wrong pistons. see the pic with 4 pistons in it....the one with the groove is correct, the others are for a ford van caliper. I took them all apart, blasted, refinished, and when they were going back together the M8x1.25 bleeders won't fit in 6 of them....cuz they had "fixed" the holes with 5/16-18 heli coils, off center off course, so you couldn't make a bleed screw actually seal. Out of 10 caliper purchased, 4 were usable, the rest went in the trash.

Here's the pistons I pulled out ... I stopped taking pictures at this point and just waited until my new ones came in...This is what Cardone/Centric/Raybestos calls a good piston and puts in their calipers....they're all shit.
cardonepiston1.jpg
cardonepiston2.jpg
cardonepiston3.jpg
cardonepiston4.jpg
cardonepiston5.jpg
mismatched cardone.jpg
 
For reference, here's a piston that I would re-use.....after washing, polishing on the lathe, inspecting, taping off the sealing surface, bead blasting the exposed areas, 2 coats of high temp sealant/primer...Anything of lesser quality than this after inspection goes in my scrap bin

good piston.jpg
 
It's the labor rates that the shops are charging, I can assure you the techs pay rates aren't rising at the same rate.

Last month, I took my 2019 F250 to the same quick-lube place that has done oil/fuel filter service since new. I dropped it off in the morning and picked it up at close. What was a $300 service seven months ago has gone to $554.

The excuse was they had made the decision to go to time and materials for fuel filter services. The days of me being pissed off and covered in diesel fuel may be making a return in 2024.

The icing on the cake was when the tech ran out of the bay and told me no one there knew how to reset the fuel filter life, I told him for what his boss is charging me he should figure it the fuck out.
 
I paid $106 for a fucking full synthetic oil change on my 4Runner because I was running out of time before heading out of town for vacation and it was already overdue. I normally change it myself. The "quick lube" place took 45 damn minutes and tried to charge $121 before I was like "what??!!!" so they offered a $15 discount because it took so long. Whatever. Just let me pay my stupid/lazy tax and be on my way.
 
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inthefield said:
It's the labor rates that the shops are charging, I can assure you the techs pay rates aren't rising at the same rate.
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Techs pay rate is only a portion of the labor rate.

Techs pay rate has gone up substantially in the last 4 years, service advisors pay rate has gone up, insurance/workers comp have skyrocketed, energy costs and rent have gone up. Shit, uniform costs have gone up 50%.

All that shit is part of the door rate.
 
Lbhsbz said:
Example...they don't pay bills, and the caliper plant (which was moved to Juarez Mexico) ran out of caliper assembly lube...so the lead plant engineer substituted hydraulic oil which they could source cheap locally. EPDM rubber, which is what we use in brake systems, reacts with hydrocarbon based oils....they did that for 3 weeks before we were made aware of it and refused to pull back the product. They were doing about 8K calipers/day at that point. No recall, no nothing. They just don't care.
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The bean counters know it'll be cheaper to just deal with the exchanges rather than pull all of them back. And of the exchanges, how many will get returned vs tossed in a fit of rage? or sit on a shelf for long enough from people gathering parts for a project that figure it was just shelf rot anyway? Don't need to pay anything for those that don't come back.
 
inthefield said:
It's the labor rates that the shops are charging, I can assure you the techs pay rates aren't rising at the same rate.
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In general a tech is gonna average 25-30% of the door, some places they include all the insurance/workman's comp in that amount as a guideline for what a shop should be paying. I just did the math, my average gross pay is right at 29% of our door rate as an ASE "Master" tech.

As far as the tech not knowing how to reset the service reminder... I know damn well he's got a smart phone in his pocket, all of that shit is on Youtube. There's no excuse to ever say that to a customer.
 
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