Thing that happened to me today #22

So I am trying to learn how to do some work on my car to save a little money and make sure it is done correctly (and also to not get hosed for the extra things they say you always need at repair shops). So I went to do my rear brakes yesterday, and it didn't turn out so easy. I have changed pads on cars 3-4 times before, but have never done the rotors. Apparently it is actually pretty easy, most of the time they just slide off when you get the caliper off, sometimes they have two screws holding them on that you need to get out.

Now rear brakes only actually do about 20% of the braking on your car, the fronts do the brunt of the work. So they don't need to get changed nearly as often. In fact my car was bought brand new and now has 106,000 miles on it, and the rear brakes had never been changed. Recently they started to make some noise and I knew it was time.

So once I got the wheel off and took a look at it I realized that after 106,000 miles, things can get a bit rusty in there. So rusty that I could not get the two little screws out for the life of me. I was told by several car people that they are useless, only put on there during the car building process to hold the rotor in place, but that they really serve no purpose (the lug nuts actually do the holding on, not the two screws). So the advice I got was to try to drill them out, just past the head of the screw, then the rotor would pop off and no need to worry about replacing them. This was much easier said then done. I actually tried an impact hammer first, which uses the force of a hammer blow to torque the screw out, which didn't budge it. So I went for the drill. After toying with it on one side for about a half-hour, I gave up. So I just figured I would put the pads on the old rotors and see what happened. After installing the pads on both sides I took it for a test drive and boy was it horrible sounding. Rotors definitely had to be changed (I could tell they were in bad shape before I even did it but had no choice but to take a chance).

So I took it to a place this morning and watched what the guy did, he took a welding torch and melted those screws out of there, neat stuff, but no way I could have done it. So in the end, I paid $20 for the pads, which they said would have been around $80 installed, and $177 for the rotors installed, which would have cost me $60 from the auto parts store. In other words, it cost me $117 to have a couple screws torched out (talk about getting screwed, literally).

So is it worth it to try yourself? Depends if you are the curious type who likes to know how things work like myself, and also, of course, the value of your time. For me, saving $60 to do the pads myself, which only takes an hour, less if you are good, is worth it because I learned something while doing it. Would have been even more worth it if I could have gotten the darn rotors off, but oh well. I'd say for most people though, just pay for it!