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Brake repair

S

selyse

New member
Good Morning,


I have a question. I have been leaking brake fluid lately and having issues with a soft brake pedal. I took it into the mechanic and they quoted me at $1600. They said my ebrake cable snapped, my routers, calipers, pads etc on my back breaks need to be replaced. I called around for different quotes and it all came back around the $1600 mark.

Has this happened to anyone else? Does $1600 seem reasonable? I'll be honest...I am a 28 year old female who knows nothing about cars.


Thanks!
 


welcome there are a ton of people who never touched there cars before they came on here and now give advise. first off we need ot see what side is leaking. then the cost of that caliper and some brake fluid and it should be good to go. i bet your e brake cable is fine. since your a woman they try to tell you that there is more wrong than there really is. hence the 1600 quote.
 
hell it could be a line leaking not a caliper then its a real easy job. everyone should know how to do 3 things on a car


1) Change the oil

2) replace a flat tire

3) giving your car a tune up
 
ouch, but thats what most shops will charge.


we do have women/ girls who we talked into doing there own work. if you dont mind getting a little dirty we're here to help.

crazy thing is brakes are super easy to change. ive been doing them since i was 15 years old (didnt even own a car yet) and that was a long ass time ago now lol

search youtube, theres tons of how to's for brakes. ( even one where the guy has no arms, does the whole job with his feet) for gp's too. but in the end they are all pretty much the same set up.

and you could buy new rotors pads for like 300 on line for a quality parts too.


for that price, that shop is using top of the line parts too. ( at least they should be) but most of the cost is the labor.

and wheres the brake fluid leak? is it hitting the ground?
 
it could be a bad master cylinder if its not leaking. even those will leak time to time, right under the master on the booster, i lost 2 of them due to leaking and a mushy pedal.
 


No way in hell should a rear brake job with calipers and rotors/pads and fixing the e-brake cable be $1600.

I don't know how much different canada is with prices but an AVG brake job without calipers is 250-400 for most vehicles. Add calipers and labors and you are at almost double that, so figure 700-900 DEPENDING on vehicle. Fixing the ebrake shouldnt be much more because they are already in there, but still around $1,000 for a shop to do it.

I think they are hiking the prices up big time or their shop rate is way more than most shops down here at 100/hr for labor.
 
The brake fluid is leaking on the back drivers side. There was a big puddle under my car yesterday as I was leaving for work. Basically they summed it up and said that my ebrake was acting like it was always on even though it was in the "off" position and that it was causing my back brakes to always be engaged and now they are completely worn out. A heard a little bit of noise from them last winter but now the sound has stopped. They said it wore down the routers which affected the calipers (or something like that). They said that the ebrake line finally snapped and that's what is leaking fluid. I called a couple other places and they all quoted me around the $1600 mark :(
 
what year car you have? 97- 03 have internal e bake, 04 up have the cable to the caliper and pinch the rear brake pads.

you need to see where the fluid is coming from, if its the line its fix able, if the caliper is leaking you can replace it.

does sound like you ignored the squeak last winter ( thats your warning to get new pads) and your now metal to metal and killed the rotors.
 
ScottyDoggs said:
what year car you have? 97- 03 have internal e bake, 04 up have the cable to the caliper and pinch the rear brake pads.

you need to see where the fluid is coming from, if its the line its fix able, if the caliper is leaking you can replace it.

does sound like you ignored the squeak last winter ( thats your warning to get new pads) and your now metal to metal and killed the rotors.
Click to expand...


My car is a 2006. I think you might have been right. I grew up in the country and sometimes our brakes would squeak from all the sand so I didn't think too much about it. I'll never make that mistake again. The fluid is leaking from under the back drivers side tire.
 


does the e brake work?

and the fluid is on the inside of the wheel and tire? or about a foot to the middle from the wheel?
 
ScottyDoggs said:
does the e brake work?

and the fluid is on the inside of the wheel and tire? or about a foot to the middle from the wheel?
Click to expand...

To be honest I have never used my ebrake so I have no idea if it works or not. The fluid was pretty much right in front of the tire, maybe an inch or 2 underneath the car.
 
selyse said:
To be honest I have never used my ebrake so I have no idea if it works or not. The fluid was pretty much right in front of the tire, maybe an inch or 2 underneath the car.
Click to expand...

that sounds like a rusted out brake line. i hope your not driving it still, if the line blows out you have no brakes at all. make sure the master cylinder is not out of fluid too.
 
ScottyDoggs said:
that sounds like a rusted out brake line. i hope your not driving it still, if the line blows out you have no brakes at all. make sure the master cylinder is not out of fluid too.
Click to expand...

Nope I am not driving it, it's sitting at the mechanics. They are waiting for me to call them back and say yay or nay to the repairs. I don't know what to do :/
 


watch that vid i posted, its a 4 bolt job after the wheel is off. easy peasy.

if you need to change that caliper its just taking the line off the caliper and bolting on the new one. stock reman calipers cost like 40 bucks for most cars. its called a loaded caliper set, comes with all new hardware bracket and caliper.
 
Brake line is an easy fix, as long as you have a friend to sit in the car while you bleed the brakes
 
your way better off finding a backyard mechanic for the job than paying garage prices. the garage even marks up the price of the parts. we've got a lot of canuck members here , maybe one lives near you.
 
04lss said:
Brake line is an easy fix, as long as you have a friend to sit in the car while you bleed the brakes
Click to expand...

not if you build a one man brake bleeder. i work alone way to much to wait for a helping hand lol

old water bottle and a clear 1/4 inch tube does the trick well.

 
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