Brake rant

[ghostjmf]

OK, I might have posted 2 years ago about how my brakes almost froze up 200 miles into Maine because my mechanic missed an obvious sound clue. I had brought the car in because of a weird sound, a squeak, it sometimes made. Now, a lot of things can squeak, in a car. But your brakes pads have something built into them these days that makes them squeak if the brakes are stuck on the wheels. I should have known that from Car-Talk. My mechanic should have known that because they're a mechanic.

They couldn't find anything making an intermittent, slight squeak, but told me my front brakes were due for work, so they did that.


Then 200 miles up in Maine on a Friday night about a month later, the squeak becomes a very loud, permanent squeal. At the time, AAA only towed you 100 miles for free. I would have had to pay maybe $200 to get towed back to Boston. Instead, I found a dealer (Honda dealer, but they can work on Acuras, since they're really Hondas) in Portland Maine, within the 100 mile tow range that was willing to fit me in on Saturday. At the time, they told me they had got the calipers working right, so didn't have to replace them, only the rotors & brake pads.


About a year later, my car is slipping with the e-brake on. My mechanic here in Somerville replaces the e-brake cables, both sides, very expensive in this car, but says nothing about anything being wrong with the regular brakes. Which they would have if they'd seen something.


This week I take the car in to have a headlight replaced, because I would have to take the battery out to get to it myself & I'm chicken to do that. I should just do it once or twice & get over being chicken. This light has gone out 3 times in the past 4 years I've owned the car; one of those times both headlights went out. There's a short somewhere, but its so intermittent its not worth paying to find it. I had had a recent problem with the e-brake slipping again; I figured I just hadn't pulled it on fully, as its almost new, right? But I thought I'd ask them to tighten the new cables some, as long as the car was in their possession.


They tell me that the rear brakes need replacing. Again. Calipers too, this time. I hadn't heard any squeaks; maybe I'm going deaf, or maybe they just hadn't gotten to that stage yet. But the rotors were scored (they no longer can spare you the price of replacing rotors by machining them flat; manufacturers are making rotors too thin for that these days).


If all this had been done in Somerville 2 years ago I could have had rotors, calipers, e-brake done at once & saved a lot of money. A lot of money.


I did check the warranty from Maine; it expired this July. I had already paid for the work to be redone in Somerville anyway, so its nice to know going back to the place in Maine wouldn't have got me anything. My Somerville place warrantees labor for "two years or 24,000 miles", not "one year or 12,000 miles" as did the place in Maine.


Moral is, I guess, if your car is making any kind of squeak/squeal, have them check brakes both front & back. In my case, I initially thought the noise was in the front, which is why they checked the front brakes, & found enough wrong with them to warrant work. Lots of other things can make your car squeal, I know, but brakes that don't work are a real scary thing.

[jaybee]

Just so you know, the built-in 'squeak" is a metal tab that will only tell you if your brake pads are worn out. While many brake pads come with the wear indicators, not all brake pads have them. The squeak indicator will not tell you if there is a caliper problem or if there is something (other than a worn out brake pad) that is damaging the rotors.

It sounds like you have had random sticking calipers on the rear for some time now. You got caught by the curse of the random problem that never shows up while the mechanic is standing there watching it.

At least Honda and Acura brake parts are fairly reasonable. When I replaced the front brakes on my GMC a few months ago, just the one set of pads (front only) was $190. That just parts, no labor.

[ghostjmf]

The Maine repair place said they had fixed a sticking caliper on one side. Saving me the expense of replacing both, as they're only sold in pairs. And I believed them, stupid me.


A year later, AAA introduced a 200-mile towing radius for my part of New England for an extra $30.00/year. Oh, if I had only had it back then. Maine has had it for a while, I believe as part of their standard rate, as a 100-mile free towing radius doesn't mean much to an area with geographical population centers as widely separated as a lot of Maine.