Foreign Cars.

[tahleel]

Taheel are you talking about Torx Bits? Lots of applications for those on all cars. Get yourself a nice set of Lisles, good american made tools with a life time guarantee. I've snapped a many while wrenching on something rusty at Parts Glore and the man at the parts store just gives me another, no questions asked.

No, I know what torx bits are. I'm talking about hex-keyed sockets.

The worst I ever heard about a brake job was a late 70s Datsun Z with dual piston calipers a waiter I used to work with years ago would talk about. He got several repair estimates around $1200 and decided to say "scew it" and kept driving the car. This car was all ready a rusty peice of junk and no were near worth $1200; so when the brakes got real bad he would downshift to slow down and just shut the ignition off and let the engine stop the car. I guess he did this until he replaced the heap with a nice American used car that he could afford.

My truck [[Ford) has dual piston calipers. Doing the brakes on that is the same as doing it on single piston calipers. Only difference is I have to push in the second caliper, which takes less than 10 seconds per side. Again, brakes are brakes are brakes.

I feel like people are getting shafted left and right, because it DOES NOT cost that much in parts nor labor. I'd say for brake pads and rotors, it shouldn't cost more than $150-200 in parts for most cars. Labor definitely shouldn't be $600-700. Labor charge for most mechanics is $60-70 hour. That means if they charge you $600-700 in labor, they bill you for 10 hours of work, which is absurd. It would take a mechanic at most two hours to replace four discs and four sets of pads.

P.S. For those people who don't know what the Datsun/Nissan Z is, it was marketed as a sports car that anyone could buy. It became a hit when it came out. Many generations later, the Fairlady Z name is still held by the new Nissan 370Z. I would like to own a classic Z one day.

-Tahleel