Get a quote from a place that specializes in brakes, or a tire store. You might be able to find a better price, but nothing compares to the savings you get from doing your own brake work.
Learning to do your own brakes can save you a lot of money. On my car, I just replaced the pads on the front brakes, and I use cheap pads that are soft enough that they don’t dig into the rotors and drums. I just did a front brake job on my car for the cost of new pads ($15), and I’ll probably do the same on my rear drum brakes as well.
What makes the brake jobs done at shops so expensive is that they insist on resurfacing or replacing the rotors and replacing the drums. If they’re warped or damaged, that’s fine, but if they aren’t warped or damaged, I don’t see why they should be resurfaced. In the old days, they would just replace the pads/shoes, and break them in with a series of stops and starts to get the new pads/shoes to take the same shape as the old rotors/drums. I guess they figured they would make more money if they get you to resurface or replace the rotors and drums.
The problem as I see it is that when they resurface good rotors, they make them thinner, which makes them more prone to warping. If the rotors aren’t warped, and you don’t resurface them, you will reduce the chances of them ever warping.
@bertrand, the best thing you can do is find a knowledgeable friend who knows what he or she is doing and have that person show you how to do a brake job on your car.
@bertrand
It’s better to get brake work done a bit too soon, rather than getting it done too late (after the pads or shoe lining has been completely used up and your braking power is severely reduced, and damage to the drums or rotors has occurred). Trying to stretch this to the absolute limit is false economy. You’ve had the car for more than a year and a half, you should just do it so you can stop spending time thinking about it.
There’s more to it than warpage, parallelism, and so on. Glazed and pitted surfaces can create noise or shudders that may not appear until after new pads or shoes are installed. In some rare cases involving drum brakes a bent or distorted wheel rim can cause all kinds of brake havoc.
Automatically assuming a thinner rotor is going to warp is incorrect. That would be true if someone machined too much off and went under the limit but otherwise it has little effect.
Most rotors have about .030 of an inch to play with with some having as much as .050-.060. Machining .010 or .020 off of a .740 thick rotor to true the rotors is not going to make any difference although if a problem does surface that machining process may get the blame even if it’s not the cause.
As I said, the DIYer at home in the drive has no one to point fingers at other than themselves if problems develop. The pro mechanic who is expected to do a job in a professional manner and stand behind their work should service drums and rotors as necessary.
I have spoken with the place I just did have do an oil change and they said for their labor cost of $150 they would replace the brakes. They stated I don’t need drums, that the parts I would need to supply would be the shoes, wheel cylinders and the “kit” you need to do the job, pricing those out came to about $80 total or about $16 for each wheel cylinder, $25 for the shoes and $22 for the kit. That means I am looking at about $230 total for the entire job going with this place.
BUT… the issue with supplying your own parts is that you will have to do it all over again if one of the cheapo parts that you found fail. Your mechanic will probably not give u a guarantee on this job either.
You could try carrying your own steak into a restaurant and ask them to cook that to perfection or tell the plumber that you would provide any pipe, fittings, and pipe dope also.
If the shop is not servicing those drums and that process is agreeable to you then I would hope that you do not get upset if any brake noise or shudder surfaces immediately, weeks, or even months later.
Was the mini van driven in winter salt? At 10 years and the mileage stated, salt can mess up rear brake parts quote a bit. Ask what the rear brake lining thickness is at the top, center and bottom of each shoe and post the readings here if you would like a little more advice about replacement. You should have 12 numbers. Ask also how close the lining surface is to the rivets. The minimum meaurement found will do. Regarding the drums, ask for the old parts to keep the mechanic honest. You might want to mark your drums with a pointed punch.
If you do get new rear linings and drums, you should never need them again for the life of the van. That could justify getting replacement drums.
I, for one, have not had to replace rear drums on several vehicles that I have driven to over 140k miles but sometimes things don’t work out that way. It is possible but very unlikely that you need new drums. Ask why you should need them. It’s a fair question. If they are worn, ask for the new drum Inside Diameter specification and the I.D. of your old drums and post the readings here. Possibly you don’t need drums and asking the question will scare off any cheaters. A little scoring of drums is ok but not a lot. This is difficult to judge w/o a photo.
Did the second shop actually look at your brakes or just give you and estimate because you asked for one? Rear brakes don’t wear down that fast so I would recommend that the second shop actually look at them first. Then let the shop provide the parts.
I have had the back brakes looked at 3 times. First time was in late 2010 after I bought the van, I took it to the dealership for an oil change and at that time they inspected the brakes. Said the fronts were okay and the backs were wearing but didn’t need replacement at that time. Now about a month ago at a private shop where I was having the front wheel baring replaced, I asked them to check the brakes. They said the fronts still had time left on them but the backs needed replaced and they recomended including new drums. Now just this past weekend I had another oil change done at another private shop and they checked and said yes I need new shoes and wheel cylinders, but the drums were fine. They are okay with me bringing in my own parts of shoes/wheel cylinders and the kit needed to do the brakes and will charge me $150 in labor as they said it’s about a 2 hour job for them. I was just surprised one shop, whom has done other work for me and my sisters car and been up front and fair in my opinion, would say I need new drums and the other shop wouldn’t.
Never thought of that, of all the times I ahve had my brakes done/checked they would just come out show me how bad they were or how good, no measurements were ever written out…
I would get the new drums. Modern drum brakes hinge at the bottom and the adjustment is just below the wheel cylinder. That means that as the brakes wear, the seals in the wheel cylinders move outward. On older drum brakes, the adjustment was at the hinge point, so that as the shoes wore down, each time the brakes adjusted themselves, or were adjusted, the seals returned to the original place in the wheel cylinders.
As the shoes wear down, so do the drums. If the shoes have worn down to the replacement point, the drums will have some wear as well. On older brakes, this was not a problem, but with newer drum brakes, when the new shoes go on with the old drums, the wheel cylinder seals will be further out than they would be with new drums.
The wheel cylinders do not have a lot of travel for the seals. As the new shoes wear against the old drums, the seals can and will get dangerously close to the limit and can catastrophically fail without warning. I have seen this happen, its not fun.
Rear drum brakes wear so slowly normally that I first questioned whether you really needed them, but it seems now that you do, so I would now recommend that you get new drums with the shoes, unless you don’t plan on keeping the vehicle very long.
“I was just surprised one shop, whom has done other work for me and my sisters car and been up front and fair in my opinion, would say I need new drums and the other shop wouldn’t.”
I would say that this shop has seen what I have seen and the other has not, YET.