So I'm no mechanic, but I can spin wrenches when needed. Did brakes once before and I ended up doin rotors too just because the car needed them anyway.
But now my mom needs new brakes on her car and the tire place is telling her $199+ per axle, and I know they will end up saying $500+ for all 4 because it is an SUV and not some little shitbox.
I want to get away without spending a ton. Her rotors don't look bad, but there are a couple little grooves in there. It's not possible to resurface them in the garage, is it? And if I just slap new pads on the old rotors, will it be fine? Or is it really worth spending the $200 on rotors as well?
Nathan Lewis
Measure how thick the rotors are. No you can't resurface them without specific tools
Xavier Cruz
I mean I can kinda tell the wear because you can always feel the little lip on the very edge of the rotor and it doesn't seem bad at all.
Ryder Kelly
take them off and have them resurfaced for about $10 a pop, don't leave your mom with a pulsating pedal.
Asher Miller
Who will resurface them? Do I gotta bring them to a shop or will a parts place do it?
Christian Flores
Guy doin the tires just called and said the water pump is leaking too. Awesome.
No puddles or anything in the driveway so I wonder what those cunts did. I will get it back and it will be pouring out coolant.
Jace Gomez
Just do them yourself dude it's easy as shit. You have so much clearance under a SUV too. You only need to jack it up enough to remove the wheel which is like an inch.
Wyatt Gray
>not having a lathe in your garage
Kys
Julian Nguyen
I know
I'm going to do it myself.
My question was whether or not I can get away with just the pads if I don't have the rotors resurfaced since the rotors will be another $200+
Anthony Richardson
Rotors aren't that expensive man, just get some chink ones from Amazon
Nathaniel Hernandez
I was looking at Advance but I might go to VatoZone instead. I could probably get the dirt cheap rotors there and end up paying like half what Advance wants. If I'm going to replace the rotors whenever I do pads, who cares.
Would be nice to get away with just pads if I could because I need to grab a jack too.
Jacob Ramirez
...
Nolan Brown
If her rotors are warped they need to be resurfaced
Ask her when her rotors were replaced last because you can't resurface them every time. Also ask her if her pedal is pulsating when she's braking
Grooves and glazed rotors can cause pulsation and squealing
I don't know how many times people have come into my shop with a brake squeal saying they just had their brakes done and they didn't replace or resurfaced the rotors.
Eli Taylor
Just replace the pads if the rotors are not obviously in need of replacement I rarely replace rotors unless they deathly need it.
Justin Edwards
No pulsating. So rotors aren't warped. I drove the car yesterday. Just the typical little grooves from the brake pads but tire guy actually said rear was worse so I will do pads x4 and take a better look at the rear rotors.
Kevin Ross
Just get an entire rotor and brake combo bundle off of eBay and call up a few friends for a chill weekend. It's a 30 minute job per axle with the right tools and maybe a caliper tool rental from AutoZone.
Austin White
>call up a few friends That's a problem
And I normally just use a big C-clamp. Maybe I will look on eBay or Amazon but I was thinkin about getting it done this weekend and I really just want to do pads if I can get away with it safely.
Ethan Martin
If you run your finger across the rotor face and it's smooth you're fine. Auto parts stores can measure the rotor thickness and resurface them if there's enough material left.
Isaiah Brooks
>I normally just use a big C-clamp.
That works fine until you try to do the rear brakes on a car that has the parking brake built in with the rear calipers.
Found that one out the hard way when I tried to do the brakes on a newer Toyota Matrix. Turns out on most modern cars with rear disc brakes, you need a special little tool that compresses the caliper piston while spinning it at the same time.
It's under $40 for a decent kit that'll do the trick, not really expensive at all, but if you don't have it when you need it, it'll fuck you over good and proper.
Hunter Perry
Damn that's good to know. If it's only $40, I could just buy one otherwise I could wrent it.
Turns out the water pump is leaking too but it's so slow right now that I'll just tell her to keep a gal of coolant in there. They said on the phone like $620 for water pump, gasket, and thermostat. Fuck that. I may not wrench on cars a lot but at least these SUVs have plenty of room to work.
V6 Explorers are like this too, all open on the front. Sister's fiance needed an alternator and it is right on top like this one and they quoted him $350 or some shit. Bought the part for like $120 and took 15min to change.
Parker Reed
> > >>I normally just use a big C-clamp. > >That works fine until you try to do the rear brakes on a car that has the parking brake built in with the rear calipers.
Truth.
OP: Buy the shit at your local auto parts store/Amazon/Rock Auto.
Tips to doing it right? Double check you tightened everything. You will probably have to use a cheater or impact gun to get the caliper bracket off. Use a wire brush to clean off the slides where the pad rides on. Lubrication.
As for the rears, you can usually rent the tool from the parts store, buy one from harbor freight, or get the fairly useless $5 cube thing
Ethan Reyes
Just use pliers. Jesus.
Cameron Nelson
>Turns out the water pump is leaking too but it's so slow right now that I'll just tell her to keep a gal of coolant in there.
REEEEEEEEEEEEE
Dude. That's a good way to get a seized up water pump. Or a chewed up timing cover when the water gets into the bearing, the bearing fails, the shaft gets pulled sideways by the belt and the impeller eats into it's volutes. It's like a $30-50 part, even if you go to Vatozone and easy to change.
David Miller
Tried that, had no luck. Not enough depth on the slots to get a good grip, slots were too wide for a screw driver, didn't really want to risk fucking it up. The ridges were also angled, as in they got narrower as they went towards the center of the piston, so using pliers, you only had the very outside edges to grip on, which just resulted in the pliers slipping a lot.
Might not be the same case for every car, but for $40, it's not a bad investment to make.
Julian Kelly
Not volute. This part, circled in red.
Anthony Fisher
>Might not be the same case for every car, but for $40, it's not a bad investment to make. Especially if you plan on doing brakes often
Alexander Garcia
>compress with clamp >turn with groove joint pliers >repeat
It's not hard to be a redneck, that's why people do it.
