What do I need to know before I take a Toyota Sienna's grinding brakes in for repair?
When the brakes are applied on a 1999 Toyota Sienna, there is a horrific grinding noise. A pretty loud grinding noise. My strong belief is that the brakes are well past their useful life, and have probably been driven to the point where the repair is going to be expensive.
So, now, before I take it into a shop and "trust" someone to diagnose and repair the problem, I am wondering if I can pull the wheels and see how much damage is involved. Is there anyone who can give me a laundry list of items to look at, what okay/not okay looks like, and… maybe even a very rough cost magnitude if it is known?
For what it is worth, I am not a mechanic but I can easily get a jack take a wheel off and look at things. It sure would be nice to know something when I am dealing with an auto repair shop. At the moment, I am a sitting duck for a dishonest garage.
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The only thing you need to know is your bank balance.
The rotors are shot. You need pads, rotors, probably new calipers, and if the grinding was caused by a faulty master cylinder, you will need one of those too. There is a good chance that contamination got into the brake lines on at least one of the calipers due to the drawback of brake fluid from excessive caliper piston movement, so you may even need a new brake line. That is of course the worst case scenario.
All in all I would roughly guess at a 600 to 800 dollar repair bill, but it may be more.
Maybe your break pads need changing and you could go to Autozone or some store and buy those and change the break pads yourself. If that isn’t the problem then you’d have to go to a shop and see what is wrong with you breaks. Try the first suggestion b4 you spend a lot of money just in case.
The thing that you need to know is that you are costing yourself bucks everytime you use those brakes. YOU ARE TAKING YOUR OWN AND ANYONE ELSE THAT RIDES IN THAT CAR LIVES INTO YOUR HANDS UNTIL YOU GET THOSE BRAKES FIXED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You need to take it to a Toyota dealer first & fore most. You most likely will need new pads and if you have driven for too long with them grinding you may need new rotors.
If you go to Midas you will need calipers, pads and rotors. DO NOT go to any aftermarket shop period. They will put very cheap, very hard pads on your vehicle and then you will have squealing and warp the rotors very quickly. Most Toyota Dealers perform brake jobs at a reasonable cost (we charge $179.95 for a brake job with new factory pads and resurfacing the rotors)
Good Luck
See Wizard8100 works for Midas… all that he said is complete B.S.