I’ve ranted about this to my two coworkers, and they both agree that brakes at 40,000 miles is about normal (that’s 64,000 kilometers, if you’re into that sort of thing). It just seems crazy to me - the last time I had to do brakes on a car was about 15 years ago.
Do they just not build 'em like they used to?
Get off my lawn! Damned kids.
What kind of car do your have Winston? Manual, or automatic? Heavy or light vehicle?
40k is about right to have the pads replaced, maybe a little young to have the whole shabang done, rotors, drums etc…etc…
It’s a 2004 Honda Accord 4-door, auto, with the regular 4 cylinder motor (the LX model). So you think this is normal, eh? I’m peevish about this, at best.
Sounds normal to me. If you do city stop-and-go driving, it can be even more frequent, depending on how you drive.
Stop and go traffic, eh? 40 isn’t bad at all. Just pads and turning the rotors?
I’m not sure what the damage is going to be yet. I noticed them grinding last week, and today’s the first chance I’ve had to get the car to the shop. Those theiving bastards at Honda are straight away going to charge me $95 for an oil change and diagnostics. I’m anticipating another $200-$300 when all is said and done. Bah.
95 bucks? I hope “diagnostics” is a euphemism for “a blowjob”.
Won’t be turning the rotors if they’re already grinding. Prabably looking at new rotors and pads. Non-Educated guess is about $40 for the pads and $120 for the rotors (both). About an hours worth of labor at $80? You’re looking at a minimum of $240…
I just replaced the front rotors and pads on my '96 Explorer and the parts were about $115 for everything (mid-grade stuff, not high end) and it only took my non-mechanic ass an hour to do both front wheels.
The difficult part about doing this stuff yourself is just having the right tools. If you had the tools I’d recommend trying it yourself, it isn’t all that hard to do.
I “needed” a brake job at 30 K miles on my 2000 Saturn(two years ago). Given that I’m generally a pretty low mileage driver, with much of my mileage coming in town on short drives, I opted to just let them do it at that point, rather than investigate a second opinion. I had no brake problems, but had taken the car in for a routine oil change.
What special tools does a '96 Explorer need anyway? My 95 Ranger only needed a 13(14?)mm wrench, and a little bleeder wrench (7mm?) to do the front pads, and I don’t think the rotors would have taken much more… maybe a drift or something if you were replacing the bearing races as well.
Rear drum brakes… those take that weird-ass tool, but it’s only like $10, and is available at every Auto Zone, CarQuest, O’Reillys, Advance & Pep Boys on the face of the earth.
Older GM cars needed a weirdly sized hex key to remove the calipers in front, but the rear brakes just needed the same rear brake tool.
Disc (Front) brakes = Easy.
Drum (Rear) Brakes = Kind of difficult.
Newer Accords are notorious for this IIRC - the brake pads that come with the car wear out very fast. My dad bought an 04 Accord and had the same problem.
The grinding noise may actually be the telltales in the pads announcing they need replacement. They are made to make noise, but do little actual damage.
That’s what I thought. Let’s keep our fingers crossed, shall we?
None, really. I said right tools, not special ones. A 13 mill socket falls squarely in the realm of ‘right’ tools.
I don’t use a bleeder wrench, I use a big-ass C-clamp to compress the caliper.
I know, I didn’t realise the emergency brake pads prevented the drum/disk from being removed when I did the rears a couple years ago.
Right, got one of them too, when I owned a Baretta.
True, true.
All you have to do is bend over and put an eye down there. You can see if there are ruts on the rotors just by looking.
I’m not even sure if they’ll turn rotors anymore, for any reason.
You won’t see if the inner face is torn up. There a fifty fifty chance that will not be able to see the damage this way.
Of course they do. As long as the rotor is within spec, they can be turned.
Again not necessarily. Some car makers warn against turning rotors as it can and often does lead to vibration problems.
I don’t believe Honda is one of those makes, but if his brakes have been metal to metal for a week, quite likely there is not enough left to turn and have the rotor be serviceable.
Having one’s brakes serviced every 150,000 miles or so sounds EXTREMELY crazy to me.
When I lived in the lovely hills around San Francisco, I’d get around 15,000 miles to a set of brake pads. Maybe 20,000. It really threw off my sense of what normal wear on brakes ought to be.
Your driving habits have a lot to do with brake wear. I have a SATURN (manual transmission); my brakes lasted 64,000 miles. My wife has a SATURN Ion; she drives mostly stop-and-go, and has an automatic-her’s lasted 36,000 miles. A manual tranny helps because the engine does a lot of the braking for you. I wonder about hybrid-electric cars-does the regenerative braking keep the brake wear down?