Jim
Mobile,#2Consumer Suggestion
Wed, August 16, 2006
I'm a mechanic, brake pads should be replaced in PAIRS THAT'S TWO WHEELS (4 PADS) AT THE SAME TIME, NOT 4 WHEELS AT ONCE, If you have one front brake pad worn, then probably the rotor on that one wheel is rough, and is eating the pad up. You do not have to replace anything on the rear if the front are worn. Rear are the same, replace rear, no requirement to replace the front. As a rule, you're going to have to replace the front pads twice before the rear needs replacement, reason? They do most of the work, they're also larger, but still will normaly wear out long before the rears will. You will almost every time need the rotors resurfaced (Smooth and slick to minimize wear) or just replace them with new rotors, they're not expensive unless you buy them from a dealership, (((ROR competitor's names))) etc have them around a third whatever the "Brake Places" try to sell them for, it's the same rotor, so don't let the "Brake Place" tell you that they are substandard, weaker, not going to last as long, (Or whatever their Bullsh*t line is today) Having said that, your helpful mechanic can replace only one pad if (Big IF) the single pad was defective, and the other three are new, then it can be done, I'll leave that up to the individual's call whether or not it's safe. I've done this when a new pad was bad, but it's generaly a bad idea UNLESS the other pads are near new. I'd want to know just what happened to the single pad (There are 4 pads on two wheels) So, if you were told that all four PADS needed to be replaced at the same time because one was worn out, this is true. No competient Repair Shop/Dealership/Garage is going to replace only one, they must operate under different rules than your friendly local Neighbor/Mechanic, that's a really good way to get sued out of business. On the other hand, if you were told that all four WHEELS needed to be replaced at once, that's possible, You'd need two sets of pads (Front and rear are different)a total of eight pads, but they come in different boxes, not all together. Now we get to the good part, if you were told that one set was for all four wheels, and they couldn't break the set up, Yep he lied big time, but not as you think. The lie here is that pad sets DO NOT come in a big box for all four wheels, there are two different box/sets one for front, one for rear. In each box/set are four pads, usualy a tube of lube, some models have a type of stick on pad that goes on the pad's rear to cut down on squeal, and some have a small tube of glue to "Stick" the pads to the calipers. Still they come in sets (Called "Axle" sets) not for all four wheels, but either for both the front whels, or for both the rear wheels. As for the tie rod ends, depending on your auto's make and model sometimes they have four, six, or even eight tie rod ends, I'm going to make an assumption here, you have a "rack and pinion" steering system, this has four, two "Outer" joints, easy to get to and easy to see if worn or damaged, and two "Inner" that are covered by flexible rubber "Bellows" (Think small acordion) that cover the inner joints. These can NOT be easily seen or replaced, it's quite a differeht job to replace the inners, sometimes you can only replace the whole steering rack and pinion set, (fortunately these are very rare) So it seems from your report that the garage wanted to replace the easy, high profit outer joints, your friend discovered the inner joints were worn too, and they tried to "Upsell" you for a four wheel brake job to make more profit. Don't go back there. sorry, allowing you to give a competitors name would instigate others to just file against their competition, to only come back later to suggest their company your comments on this policy are welcome! CLICK here to see why Rip-off Report, as a matter of policy, deleted either a phone number, link or e-mail address from this Report.