Fail :(

[mjb]

So much for "It won't be more than £200". Bloody £370 it cost! Probably not going to be able to afford the airshow after all

Roughly:
£100 2x ditchfinders
£60 2x brake discs
£30 brake pads
£20 boots
£75 labour
£50 VAT

PLUS I now have a nasty squeal from the offside (I think) wheel whether I'm pushing the pedal or not! Bastards had better be open tomorrow

[ianst28]

So much for "It won't be more than £200". Bloody £370 it cost! Probably not going to be able to afford the airshow after all

Roughly:
£100 2x ditchfinders
£60 2x brake discs
£30 brake pads
£20 boots
£75 labour
£50 VAT

PLUS I now have a nasty squeal from the offside (I think) wheel whether I'm pushing the pedal or not! Bastards had better be open tomorrow

bast"£$s not good mate i hate the way garages just carry on with work regardless dealers are the worst for it but a garage i know really well (family) takes the p155 with it sometimes i'm embarressed to call them family they quoted one guy 300 to do the job but when it was finished it was closer to 750 i know that everyone has to make a living but sometimes

[steve_earwig]

Here's the £200. Sorry, if you'd have said when you started it was going to cost more I'd have told you not to bother 'cos I haven't got it. Please un-repair my car... Thanks for the MOT.

Ok, ok, they'd probably keep your car but a mate of mine did just this with a bike, they delivered it back to him un-repaired

Surely, they knew what was wrong with it and knew how much the parts & labour would be, so this £200 really was finest bullcrap.

[mjb]

PLUS I now have a nasty squeal from the offside (I think) wheel whether I'm pushing the pedal or not! Bastards had better be open tomorrow

Well that's been sorted by some spirited driving. Not nice having instant fog every time i stopped (the smoke pouring from the brakes!), but they've stopped squeaking. Popping the lid off the brake fluid reservoir first helped loads too - yep, they didn't open it when they were winding the calipers back

They didn't balance the new wheels though. Just had to take it to sh*t-fit and pay £20 I don't have so it doesn't shake itself to bits at 70. A pair of HUGE great bloody weights on the rims

[steve_earwig]

Not nice having instant fog every time i stopped (the smoke pouring from the brakes!), but they've stopped squeaking.

That doesn't sound good!

Bluddy cowboys I'm surprised the master cylinder didn't overflow and leak brake fluid everywhere.

Did you say who these clods are yet?

[Welly]

Looks like the sort of garage who use menu pricing and to be fair the prices aren't too bad and most motorists would accept £60.00 for a pair of discs etc. BUT we know what this stuff really costs and it's annoying for us.

This garage is making profit on it's bought in parts and it's labour. My mechanic seems to just make profit on the labour only (unless he's been kind to me) I'm sure he said he just passes on the raw cost of parts to the customer - I maybe wrong.

[teamster1975]

Did you make it to Farnborough in the end Matt?

[mjb]

Not nice having instant fog every time i stopped (the smoke pouring from the brakes!), but they've stopped squeaking.

That doesn't sound good!

Nah that was me intentionally giving them torture (repeated heavy braking from "fast" - just shy of ABS for maximum wear, and driving full throttle in 2nd at a constant 40mph because I'm also standing on the brake). You see, the disc plus pads *JUST ABOUT* fit in the caliper, that is with the pads being pushed onto the disc. I couldn't find a file so I decided to have some fun instead. The hard part was remembering to stop well short of lights/junctions so I could keep moving albeit slowly and not warp the discs

Did you say who these clods are yet?

Castletown Garage on the A34 just north of the Newcastle-under-Lyme ring road. TBH I think the owner was great, it's just he employs a bunch of clueless little chavs. Don't think any of them could be over 20

[Welly]

If you've done that to new discs you'll warp them

[mjb]

If you've done that to new discs you'll warp them

How? Warping comes from uneven high temperatures over the disc, caused by getting them nice and hot then holding the car on the footbrake. I didn't even risk using the handbrake as the pads were still bloody close to the disc (if not touching) so made sure I never actually stopped when the discs were hot

Turns out I didn't wear them down as much as I though I had. I warped them sunday morning when I hit the airshow traffic jam. The problem is the brake pads still weren't worn enough so were still constantly touching the discs and getting bloody hot just from driving along (not braking) then warping from the fact they were still touching even when I religiously use the handbrake as much as possible

Fuckers. Robbing me of £370 I didn't have (put me right into unauthorised overdraft) for a substandard job I'm going to have to fork out even more to replace asap

[Welly]

I was always told to "bed them in" for the first 200 miles or so

[mjb]

Exactly what I was doing, except at a greatly expedited rate because not only did I have to bed them in, I had to wear them down by a few mm each side too

From what I understand, the only reason they say you should take it easy during the "bedding in period" is because you've got substantially reduced braking ability until the pads are able to sit flat on the discs and you don't want to have to slam on the anchors only to find you're not stopping

Generally with brake pads, the hotter they get (to a point) the more they grip and (here's the relevant bit) the faster they wear. Sooo you can either take it easy for a couple hundred mile or do half a mile somewhere safe with your foot on the brake and accelerator as long as you are aware that if you stop straight after and leave your foot on the brake, you WILL have warped discs

[Welly]

I was always told to "bed them in" for the first 200 miles or so

That's one night's work for me then

We were talking about a different sort of "bed" I'm affraid - please pay attention!

[steve_earwig]

Exactly what I was doing, except at a greatly expedited rate because not only did I have to bed them in, I had to wear them down by a few mm each side too

From what I understand, the only reason they say you should take it easy during the "bedding in period" is because you've got substantially reduced braking ability until the pads are able to sit flat on the discs and you don't want to have to slam on the anchors only to find you're not stopping

Generally with brake pads, the hotter they get (to a point) the more they grip and (here's the relevant bit) the faster they wear. Sooo you can either take it easy for a couple hundred mile or do half a mile somewhere safe with your foot on the brake and accelerator as long as you are aware that if you stop straight after and leave your foot on the brake, you WILL have warped discs

Hmm, not sure about all that. Read this and discuss.

[mjb]

Interesting. However either I could bed them in properly and put up with a couple of thousand miles of fuel costing me twice as much (yep, the brakes when unpressed were rubbing that much), -OR- I could burn the discs and wear several mm off them, which has resulted in much less rubbing, but it's now squealing rhythmically whether I'm pushing the pedal or not. At least I'm up to normal economy.

At the end of the day I'll be forking out for a new set of discs and pads soon anyway, so it's just best that I've brought my economy back up to scratch and got rid of most of that bloody noise. It was doing my head in