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Old 01-04-2007, 03:14 PM
Badger Badger is offline
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Default VW Brake Question

OK, so my rear pads are gone. I take it to "Dave's" and they wanted $345 parts and labor for the pads $111 for a brake fluid flush. This is for an '02 VW Passat 1.8T, 55k miles. 25k miles by me with no brake work.

Brake Check, a chain here in Austin, tells me I can get these services for $90 and $40 respectively.

I ask Brake Check about their brakes and they say they are ceramic and branded specifically for them, say they're good quality, and the other place is fleecing me. Dave's assures me that his cost is what they are quoting me, and that there's no way I get out of Brake Check for less than what he's charging me. Brake Check reassures me their quote is good to the penny.

I read a couple internet horror stories about Brake Check and decide it can't be all that bad since they do so many brakes in Texas they're gonna piss someone off. Besides, they're just replacing pads- I've done this before myself on a Dodge with a little help, and I'm not that good with cars.

So as I'm picking my car up from the place that wanted $450. I tell them I'm gonna take it somewhere else, maybe even do it myself. A mechanic walking buy mentions something about the calipers being different on VW's and it's easy to screw up and you can blow up some cylinder.

My questions-
1) Are these ceramic brakes branded for Brake Check not worth saving over $300? Will they be the same as a name brand?
2) How legitimate is the claim that these brakes are difficult and that someone else or myself could really F up my car?
3) If they are more difficult am I still OK trusting Brake Check?
4) If I can find somewhere I can get my car up on a jack is this something I should do myself?
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Old 01-04-2007, 03:25 PM
Badger Badger is offline
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Default Re: VW Brake Question

milliondollaz helped out in another thread with this info:
[ QUOTE ]
all the cheapo's use the same stuff, and you'll get the same performance. if you are comfortable buying brakes from autozone or advance auto parts, i wouldn't worry about the quality of your brakes.

if you like to drive fast, and don't care about dust, get some Hawk pads.

if you don't get a brake fluid flush, i wouldn't worry about it till 100k. its good to get the water and possible air out of your brake lines, but if you haven't ever noticed spongy brakes, meh. $40 sounds like a good deal to get someone else to do it, but it always reminds me that there is no free lunch. you might not want a $40 brake flush.

you don't want some joker overtightening your bleed screws, they are easy to overtighten. and they mess up the caliper when they are overtightened, not the 50 cent bleed screw.

also, your brake master cylinder is just a piston with seals around it, going back and forth inside a cylinder. when you push on the brakes, the piston moves a proportional amount to the distance your pedal travels. so over the 55k life of your car, your pedal has probably only moved a certain amount, so the seals inside your master cylinder have only moved through a small region. this region is probably smooth and shiny. what happens to cars as they get older, the water that gets absorbed into the brake fluid starts to surface corrode the inside lining of your cylinder. so when you take an old car in to get brakes, and they bleed the brake fluid, some 14 year old kid gets into your car and pushes the brake pedal all the way down to flush the fluid out, and pushes your virgin seals past the shiny part where they live, right into the corrosion, and rips them to shreds. so now you mysteriously have a leaky master cylinder, and while you are at a stop light, with constant pressure on your brake pedal, it slowly moves in. you don't notice this till later, and the jiffy lube circle of life continues.

if you put 55k miles on your car in 10 years, there might be corrosion inside your master cylinder. if your car is only 4 years old, some 14 year old kid can't screw it up, since the inside of your master cylinder probably looks fine.

between those arbitrary years i made up, i personally would make sure they didn't push the pedal all the way down. 4 years is VERY conservative by the way, 10 might still be fine but i like doing things right on my car.

[/ QUOTE ]

So I'm copying my response to here where it should be.

Thanks for all the info. Before I saw your response I realized it'd be better to start a thread in the right forum instead of hijacking an OOT thread. It's here.
So you addressed most of my concerns, but I had one additional one brought up today when I picked up my car from the $450 brake job place. A mechanic mentioned these VW brakes are easy to screw up and they might screw up my master cylinder because the calipers were different. Should I be worried about Brake Check handling these?
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  #3  
Old 01-15-2007, 02:56 AM
milliondollaz milliondollaz is offline
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Default Re: VW Brake Question

i didn't see anything different about VW brakes when i went to this forum.

the only thing that looks different on VW's (at least the ones i was looking at) is that the rear brakes are a pain in the butt to reset, so that the new pads will fit in.

this guy and this guy both used a cube with prongs on it. not sure what they mean.

some pistons are loosely threaded, so you can screw them back in. but all will retract under pressure. i bought a caliper piston pushing tool from harbor freight for like 5 bucks, but i had been using screwdrivers and muscles for years. the tool is just more efficient.

so in summary, i don't see anything revolutionary that would inhibit you from changing your brakes yourself.

just be careful not to overflow your master cylinder when you push back all the pistons in your calipers to make room for new brake pads.
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  #4  
Old 01-18-2007, 03:12 AM
Jameso Jameso is offline
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Join Date: Jul 2006
Posts: 189
Default Re: VW Brake Question

The Cube

I always use some silicone lube on the caliper piston where the dust boot rides before I screw them in. It might be a good idea to open the bleeder valve before you screw them in too. The shop that told you that you could seriously mess up the brakes was probably talking about damaging the rear calipers when you reset the pistons. The square cut seal that keeps the brake fluid from leaking by the piston can be damaged when you screw them back. The good news here is that if you do what you can to minimize the pressure on those seals (open the bleeder valve), you'll pop the same number of seals that the shop will in the long run. I doubt that you'll have a problem here, but it is always a possibility. I'd feel pretty confident with a fairly new car that the job would go smoothly.

edit-the guy who told Badger that the calipers could make the master go bad is FOS. Call the dealer and see what they're charging for the same job. $111 for a system flush seems ridiculous unless there is some ungodly expensive special fluid required.
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