Rant about a recent experience with a garage!

breadbin

I have a 2004 Corolla T Sport. It's not worth a lot of money and I suppose I don't want to spend too much on it either. I used to bring it to the main dealers to be fixed but found they could hold onto the car for days and charge me full whack.

I try and do a lot of work on it myself but because I need it for work I don't do half enough for fear of breaking something or just not being able to get it back together but I am getting a bit more adventurous. In another thread I diagnosed my own problem of a stuck piston in the front passengers caliper because the pads were sticking to the disc, making the disc red hot after driving and making noise too. I knew this because the drivers side did the exact same thing a couple of months ago.

I've watched plenty of videos of taking apart calipers and refurbishing them but was a bit cautious about getting it back together, especially the rubber boot looks a bit finicky, bleeding the brakes after etc. A few things that I had not done before and gave me cause to question my competence especially with the braking system. I decided to bring in to a garage and ask them to clean the piston for me.

I brought it to the garage, told them what the problem was, told them which caliper was sticking and asked them to clean it. This garage is cheap and handy. They tell you when to bring it in and they'll usually do it then and you head off for an hour and they usually have it ready when you come back. So I headed off and when I came back the car was jacked up on the lift and the rear drivers wheel was off. Opposite of what I told him. He finished what he was doing and got the car back. I asked him did he look at the front passenger brake and he said no, that it was ok. He said the rear drivers was stuck though. This annoyed me because I had recently spent 600 euro in a Toyota main dealer sorting out the hand brake. So anyway I went off and thought well maybe I was wrong, maybe it was that wheel that was causing the noise.

Well it wasn't before but such a racket coming out of the brake now, squealing while driving and quiet when braking. Driving around and people looking around. Talk about embarrassing! Not only that though but the hand brake wasn't working. It was pulling right up to the plastic, clicked about 16 times. It wouldn't hold the car on an incline. He let me leave the garage with the hand brake not working. Not only that but he drove it out of the garage and put the hand brake on himself and he looked at it for a moment and said nothing. Bastard.

Well sorry for such a long rant but it really makes my blood boil that there is a guy like this working out there. As far as I know there are 2 of them in the garage, him and the boss. Don't know what to do about it though as in tell the boss or who - that's why the rant! It could have been so dangerous!

As it turns out it spurred me into looking for a fix for the noise and the hand brake. I fixed both myself with a bit of googling, I took the caliper off the back and cleaned it up, greased the brake hardware bits and actually realized it was the brake hardware making the noise. I needed to file a bit off to stop it rubbing off the top of the disc.

So then I had a look at the handbrake. There is an adjuster under the actual handbrake itself but that didn't make sense to me to tighten that because the other brake wasn't interfered with so I had to adjust it at the wheel. He put the disc back on wrong because the little hole in the disc was not lining up to the adjustment screw on the drum brake. So I had to take the caliper bracket off and then the disc and mess with the adjustment there. Turns out the adjustment screw had been turned fully to pull the brakes in so as he could take off the disc presumably, I opened it the other way a few times and bingo. At one stage before I had the disc off I was turning the hub with the lug bolts and then I thought I had forgot to put the handbrake on in the car and it jacked up. No, it was on alright but the brake was not engaging with the disc! So a couple of turns of the adjustment screw and it was tight again. So I don't know did he forget to turn the adjusting screw back or what.

Well I learned a bit about the car from this experience. Proud of myself for sorting it out. Every cloud and all that! Still can't believe he let me drive away with the handbrake the way it was. Whatever about the noise. I literally could have done a better job myself. I would have been a hell of a lot safer anyway! I won't be going back there as if I need to say that out loud:)

Miley Byrne

Just my tuppence worth, but when it comes to brakes, if your not an expert then my advice is to take it to someone who knows exactly what they are doing. Even after that bad repair, take it to someone more reputable to check it out afterwards.

Brakes are not for novices in my opinion

cletus

First job I ever did on a car was change brake pads. Like any other job, if you're careful and follow the correct steps and procedures you'll be fine

Needles73

cletus wrote: »

First job I ever did on a car was change brake pads. Like any other job, if you're careful and follow the correct steps and procedures you'll be fine

Does this sound normal procedure "I needed to file a bit off to stop it rubbing off the top of the disc."......

cletus

My post was in response to the post above mine. Like I said, follow correct procedure. I'm sure you already know the answer to your question, as do I