Hi Everyone! I'm new, but have been reading your posts for awhile. I love hearing about everyone's mods and off roading adventures. However, I am finally having a problem with my 4Runner that I need some advice on. Last year I bought a 1990 4 runner. I love it. Never has given me a lick of trouble. First, a bit of history... About 4 months ago, I brought my normal city driving car (cavalier) in for new breaks. At the same time, I brought in the 4Runner to check the breaks. (it was feeling soft when I would break). Well, the mechanic said I had 80% left on my pads. No problem. Well, turns out the softness in breaking was from bad shocks. So I took it to the Toyota dealer where I bought it a few days ago to have new shocks put on (took me awhile to get the money to do it). At the same time I had them rotate my tires (front to back, back to front; I had some cupping due to the bad shocks.). Well a day after I picked up the truck, I noticed a high pitched squealing noise from the front right tire. I took it back to the dealer. Turns out, he says my caliper (sp?) pin is bad, and that when he rotated my tires he noticed that I only had 25% of my break pad left on the front right and about 40% left on the front left. He said because the truck is 4x4 it would be about a $500 and that is only if the rotars aren't bad. Okay, I will be the first to admit that I don't know anything about fixing trucks. This seems a bit sketchy to me. First, can him rotating the tires, or putting new shocks on cause him to ruin my brakes, second, if they are bad, how did I go through 50% of my remaining break pad in less than 4months? (it's a trip truck, highway miles, etc...). Third, is $500 reasonable? Thanks in advance. And I hope to have a picture up soon. I so do love this truck! I hope that I can make it last for about 220K!

 

Well I could take a stab at the first few questions but I'll let someone else pipe in that probably knows better. Not sure what a caliper pin is but I am assuming that he means a caliper piston. If they have to replace the calipers then yes $500 is somewhat reasonable. If all they want to do is change the pads then that price is outragous. It cost me like less than $40 I think for my pads straight from a dealer and changing them is simple and shouldn't take a dealer more than an hour. Look into getting your calipers rebuilt rather than replaced. What they do is remove the piston, hone out the hole it was in, replace the seals and call it good. Oh ya when talking about vehicle stopping things they are called BR A KES

 

dont worry, my brakes are so bad that they squeal even when im not on them. pretty embarassing. oh, and when i hit a bump, theres a noise coming from the passenger side rear tire, it sounds like im dragging a chain behind me on the pavement. the same rear brake used to groan when i stopped, but not anymore. i think my brake might have fallen off. either that or it fixed itself.