Sounds like fun but also sounds like chaos
My daughter just bought a new Hyundai Elantra.
I work on a lot of older cars, and I’ve found the 3rd party repair manuals (e.g. Haynes) are fine for most things. But this being a new hybrid I thought to myself, “Hmm, might be a good idea to buy the official Hyundai service manual for her car. That way I can work on it.”
And I just discovered… you can’t simply purchase a paper or pdf version of the service manual. I must buy a frick’n subscription for $600/year. WTF? 
“No user-serviceable parts anywhere” seems to be the modern mantra.
As well the car manufacturers are making a concerted effort to drive the 3rd party car repair industry out of business by making it impractically expensive to obtain the tech data and tools necessary to diagnose & repair the cars. Friend of mine owns a BMW / etc. shop. The fees he pays to get access to their manuals and software & such are insane. And going up far more than the inflation rate every year.
Yes, that’s B.S.
I’ve also heard some manufacturers are (or are thinking about) encrypting the OBDII data. That way, you can’t simply connect a cheap OBDII reader to the vehicle and read the codes - you are forced to take the vehicle to an authorized dealer to have the codes read. That’s major B.S.
Some states have enacted (or tried to enact) laws that prevent that, but it’s currently tied up in court.
Interesting interactions between federal laws (definitions) and car sales:
A question for DIY car repair folk: when doing a front brake job, how vital is it to rebuild the front calipers? I need to replace the front brakes on my son’s HHR – they’re grinding – and frankly I’d prefer not to have to rebuild them as bleeding brakes is never fun and doing it on the driveway in the winter is an added dose of PITA. Can I safely just replace the rotors and pads?
It really depends on the condition. If the car is less than 5 years old or so, and you are replacing factory brakes, and there are no other issues (grooved rotors, leaking fluid, grabbing calipers, etc…) you are probably OK with simply cleaning the outside of the pistons (important so that you don’t create leaks) and pushing them back into the calipers.
Regardless, it would be a good idea to replace as much of the brake fluid as you can. Once you’re done, remove as much of the old fluid from the master cylinder as you can (syringe or turkey baster, neither of which will be suitable for food afterwards) as you are able and refill with fresh fluid from a new container. Brake fluid will absorb water from the air and go bad. It would be best to flush the system, but as that seems to be a problem, replacing as much as you can will help. Refer to your owner’s manual for brake system flush intervals.
The most important thing when putting new pads in the calipers is to clean and regrease the slide pins.This is what keeps the caliper grabbing both sides of the pads and applying them evenly to the rotor. They can get stuck and only one pad may be doing all the work, and getting all the wear. If the pistons aren’t leaking I would leave them alone. Rebuilding the calipers by replacing the pistons can easily lead to leaks and you might as well just buy new calipers rather than rebuild.
If you work on cars and brakes more than once in awhile, a hand held vacuum pump is worth the $40. You attach the tube to the bleeder valve, crack the valve open and draw the old brake fluid out. Tighten the valve again and you are done without getting any air in the system or needing to bleed the calipers. And doing it by yourself without someone pumping the brakes. This can also easily be used to change out the entire fluid in the system.
Let me second the recommendation for the Mityvac, but if you think you might do this a few times, consider the Motive Power Bleeder. It doesn’t cost any more than the Mityvac unless you need a bunch of different adapters. It’s much less fiddly and easier to clean up.
Instead of sucking the fluid out, it pushes it out from the master cylinder, and holds a significant reservoir of fluid. It’s entirely possible to flush all four corners from a single pump up and fill with no worry about introducing air if you don’t fill the master reservoir up in time.
When I was doing track days with my Lotus, and thus flushing the brakes a few times a year, it made the process much simpler. Even better was the ATE brake fluid that came in either blue or yellow so you could see the transition, but my understanding is the blue is no longer imported as it’s the wrong color from a US regulations perspective.
I used to change out the brake fluid completly every year or so in my Trans Am. Pull blue ATE through the system, then next year change it all out with amber.
The reason that blue ATE is hard to find and against US regulations is because people would see blue fluid in their brake master cylinder and then add blue winshield washer fluid to the brake system. So the regulations are an attempt to protect stupid people from themselves.
Some people should not even open the engine compartment of their car.
Dear god. I got a great option taken away from me because people can’t even identify the correct icon on the fill cap? I’m not really comfortable with people that would do that being on the road with me.
Cars no longer have user serviceable parts becuase users are so unserviceable. Knowing how to maintain a car has just about exactly zero with knowing how to drive one. That wasn’t necessarily true in 1920. But it’s not 1920 anymore.
/pedant hat on
ATE Type 200 is the same stuff and is readily available. In fact, it existed before the Super Blue was introduced – as a bit of a gimmick to make full fluid flushes easier for race cars. On a street car old fluid is going to be noticeably darker after a while, making the procedure “flush the fluid until it looks new.” Super Blue was essentially pre-aged so you could flush fluid that was a few days or weeks old, alternating between gold and blue colors to know when the system was 100% flushed.
In my experience, the blue stained the system so bad that it wasn’t all that useful, and most people just ran the blue stuff all the time because it was nifty. (I did too after realizing the futility in going back and forth).
As for why they had to drop Super Blue, it was a long-standing DOT regulation governing brake fluid color:
S5.1.14 Fluid color. Brake fluid and hydraulic system mineral oil shall be of the color indicated:
DOT 3, DOT 4, AND DOT 5.1 NON-SBBF—COLORLESS TO AMBER.
DOT 5 SBBF—PURPLE.
HYDRAULIC SYSTEM MINERAL OIL—GREEN.
Somehow they got away with selling Super Blue with a DOT label for 15 years before the DOT finally caught on. Why is this a regulation? I don’t know.
But the good news is you can still get ATE Type 200 easily. Like I said, it’s the same stuff.
/pedant hat off
Got it. Be right back, I gotta evenly regrease my rotors.
The slide pins on the calipers that move when you step on the brake and push the pads against the rotors. No grease on the pads or rotors.
Replace everything - rotors, pads, and calipers. That’s what I’ve been doing the past few years on all of our cars. You can get packages that contain all the parts from rockauto.com.
And use the right type of grease. Regular petroleum-based grease may be incompatible with the rubber seals. Use a grease that is specifically designed for caliper pins. Also use a torque wrench when torqueing the two caliper bolts.
The first time I dealt with changing disc brake pads, I had a mechanic do one and supervise me doing the other. We didn’t do this. The one on his side broke first so I got a free redo. 
Thanks for the replies. An old mechanic once told me that if you don’t rebuild the calipers they can develop leaks. He claimed that sediment builds up on the bottom of the fluid reservoir behind the piston and that when you push the piston back to make room for the new pads that sediment can score the cylinder / seals and cause leaks.
Regarless, I have no desire to do a fluid change myself so I’ll likely take it to a brake shop for the repairs.