What about Wearever Ceramic Gold/Platinum "Premium" Pads?

Seem to be the Advance Auto "store brand"... lot of good reviews on their website, but of course that would be the case... lol

Anyone know anything about these pads though?

 

Yea I just pulled the trigger on a set of $64 Wagner ThermoQuiet pads... and a pair of $41 rotors... got $40 off the entire purchase, so got the pads and both Rotors for $104...

I'll pick them up tomorrow morning, and if I can 'nurse' the car till this Saturday, then I'll look into installing them myself.

I don't know about the calipers though.. its 8:30pm here now so I wont find anyone to give me a second opinion tonight... The guy at Pep Boys was trying to show it to me. He never actually took anything off my car, just loosened some parts and let me look at it while it was all up on the rack telling me that some "pin" was pushed out to where it wasn't supposed to be, I didn't really see any "pin" ... I'm sure he knew what he was talking about but when I asked to see it, I figured it would have been obvious...

He claimed that "the pin might be pushed back in, or it might not be able too" ...

That to me just sounded like an excuse for "you need to buy a pair of $70 calipers from us!" ...

I can buy them from Advance Auto for $56 according to their website.... and if I take my old Calipers back to them for recycling, they'll give me $40 back for each one... while Pep Boys said nothing about giving me anything back for "recycling" ...

So maybe I'll try to do it myself this weekend... I really do not drive my car much, barely not more then 10 miles a day... and I'm not too worried about the rotor damage through out the week, since I already just bought two new ones...

 

Oh and get this... while the guy at Pep Boys was quoting me their prices... I just happened to have my 7" android tablet in my coat pocket, and whipped it out and logged onto THEIR public Wifi... pulled up their website...

"Soo, you're telling me the rotors are $60 each... but according to your website here, you have $40 rotors in stock that match my car!"

He didn't know how to explain that other then "Oh uh.. yea, well the website is sometimes wrong, and uh we don't really have those anymore!"

Uh huh...

 

Whatever items you purchase, you might find this link handy that details the process of replacing the pads and rotors.
https://www.chevyhhr.net/forums/how-tutorial-library-21/how-replace-rotors-pads-06-hhr-15226/

 

You most likely don't need to worry about calipers. You don't even really need to worry about the pins if you are doing the rotors, you can just remove the 2 bolts holding the bracket and the whole thing comes off.

If you do remove pins just pull the lower one then rotate the caliper up and slide it off of the top pin. Be careful of contaminating the grease.

 

I was just reading through that very thread last night actually! :)

Its helpful, and I may be able to do it myself... just not sure if I have all the necessary tools, and more so I don't entirely trust my cheap old Jack that came with the car.

On the plus side, my boss knows some 'backyard mechanics' who do work pretty cheap.. so if I decide to not try it myself, there's that option.


I would love to know a little more about the calipers in general, of course I know what they are, and what they do... but specifically, I would like a better idea of what these "pins" are, and what they do.... so I can better understand for myself what really needs to be done...

 

The pins are what the caliper slides on. They are basically bolts with a long blank sot on the leading end. They bolt onto the inner side of the bracket and hold the caliper onto the car but allow the caliper to move when the piston moves.

 

Ok that makes sense, also got to watching some videos on calipers last night, particularly ones detailing stuck pins, etc...

So, my next question is...

I was.. told... by the Pep Boys guy that one of my Pins had "slid out" and that "these things sometimes can't be fixed, so you gotta replace the entire Caliper!"

Yea well I do not believe that, and a little searching revealed that I can buy individual Caliper PINS in a package of twos, for as little as $10, from the various auto parts stores...

But what does this mean that the pin has "slid out"? He implied that sometimes, you can push the pin back in but not always, so its better to just replace the entire caliper. Sounded to me like he was just trying to get out of doing a little extra work to fix a pin?

For that matter, is a pin issue a matter of urgency? If I have to replace an entire Caliper, I can't do that... its going to have to wait a few months so I can save enough to buy one...

 

Was this guy doing a tear down inspection?

I don't know what he meant from the second hand filter.

Why do you think you could not replace the caliper? Just remove the banjo bolt.

 

He put my car up on a rack, didn't even take my wheels off... cause he said "you have custom rims and that makes this kinda inspection easier to do!" ... and it looked like he might have loosened the calipers, slightly, to look at the brake pads, but he never actually removed any brake pads, just pointed out the pads between the caliper and the rotor and said it was metal on metal...

Yea well, duh, I already knew that for myself...

Then he went on about this business with "your caliper pin is slid out, sometimes that can't be fixed, so you gotta replace the entire caliper" ...

At this point I got the impression that they were just looking for excuses to add onto my final bill.