I normally do the brakes myself, the only reason I had the dealer do them was that they replaced my ball joints under warranty at less than 36,000 miles and I had them do the brakes while they were at it. Had I known it would be $500.00 my decision would have been otherwise.

 

thats crappy .. they charged you like they weren't in there anyway and had it all apart doing the joints

what did they do to the rotors?

 

I'm not trying to pick on you, or argue with you, I just find it amusing that you're concerned enough about your brakes to replace multiple components of the system at what most people I know of would consider extremely unnecessary frequency, yet you don't see a need to put high quality components in. I'd rather put really good parts in, take good care of them and replace them less often than put cheap parts in and replace them more often. As a general rule, I've found that even if you're taking care of the cheap parts, good parts last longer and do a better job to boot. Considering the consequences of not stopping when I wish, I consider the brake system to be somewhat more important than the systems that make you go.

I understand that your system of ensuring stopping ability is to regularly and frequently replace all parts, but to me that is just uneconomical, and I believe better parts to be safer anyway.

 

All they did was turn the rotors and replace the pads, they probabaly didn't even re-pack the bearings if I had to guess or they would have charged me another $300.00. Next time I'll just buy new rotors and do it myself. The rotors only cost about $80.00 and the pads for good mettalic or ceramics are about the same. I have all the air tools and bearing packers and all it usually only takes me about an hour to do them.

 

is it 4x4?

 

Let me throw this question out there.
Why are the front pads bigger than the rear pads?

 

No, 2wd. .......

 

Who is this question for? Or are you generally wondering for yourself?

The reason front pads are bigger is because they do like 80% of the stopping. This is why even being bigger they normally get replaced twice as often as the rears.