Brakes update

OK, so yesterday we went down to Jon's barn and got the front brakes done on the 2001 Dakota. Many thanks to Jon for the use of his barn as well as pretty much doing all the work.

Speedy's estimate of $590.50 Cdn includes the following items:
$278.20 Rotors (12 month warranty)
$106.36 Pads (after 40% off sale) (12 month warranty)
$ 74.99 Labor
$ 25.99 Caliper servicing (whatever that is)
$ 5.95 Brake fluid / friction lube
$ 21.99 Clean and Adjust Rear Brakes
$ 77.02 Sales tax

I'm not sure what caliper servicing entails, but it sounds an awful lot like labor to me. It's not new calipers, just servicing the ones that are already there. As for cleaning and adjusting the rear brakes, that was supposedly included in the maintenance package we just had them do at the end of April, at least according to the marketing information associated with that package.

Our actual costs (these are in US dollars):
$198.00 PowerSlot Rotors ($170 for the parts plus $28 shipping)
$ 42.21 Autozone Durastop Gold pads (lifetime warranty)
$ 15.00 Dinner at Bob Evans (our friend Mark generously picked up most of this)
3/4 of a tank of gas, probably about $30
brake fluid used: none
anti-sieze compound used: a couple of thin layers, maybe a few pennies worth

Total is about $286 US, or $358 Cdn. That's with upgraded high-performance slotted rotors (time will tell if these actually provide any benefit, but they do look nice). And we get a lifetime warranty on the pads to boot, which is a drastic improvement over Speedy's warranty. Not to mention that spending time down at Jon's visiting friends, working on our truck and watching Ed's exhaust being replaced is infinitely more enjoyable than sitting in the waiting room at Speedy.

The pulsing we were getting? Totally gone. This is something we'd been living with since at least April of 2004. Speedy had told me at that time that it was coming from the rear brakes, that the drums were slightly out of round due to towing our trailer. I have records that they machined the rear drums on April 17, 2004 in an (unsuccessful) effort to eliminate this pulsing. Since we did nothing to the rear brakes yesterday, and the pulsing is now gone, I feel safe in concluding that we never had an issue with the rear brakes to begin with.

The front pads and rotors had already been done by Speedy on April 30, 2003. Notice that the work done on the rear brakes trying to eliminate the pulsing was done within the warranty period on the front brake hardware. Clearly their replacement rotors had already warped within a year.

No matter, as we would have had to pay labor for them to replace those rotors with equally poor quality parts. It is my hope that what we have now will prove to be far superior, at a much lower price.

I may be slow to come around to the do-it-yourself school of automotive repair, but I'm learning.