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Should my mom pay for this repair on her car, or buy a new one?

A

Accipiter22

Banned
My mom has this car, it's a 94 buick century, doesn't give her any problems, gets 26 miles to the gallon. She just uses it for going back and forth on errands and to work. Now, it needs front brake pads, rotors...it'll be about 400 to repair it. The car has 177,000 miles on it. Should she get into the market for a used car, or stay with this one? She's almost flat broke, but she has some money (about 10,000) that she has saved, and could be used on a car..
 
I say just get the brakes. If she really doens't have much money, and the car is still going strong, then there's no need to buy a new one.
 
If she only uses it for errands, I see no reason to buy another used car. It won't be much better, and eventually it too will need brakes.
 
$400 bucks to change out some rotors and pads? jebus!...front pads cant be more than about 20 bucks...rotors...amybe 20-40 per rotor....you could replace yourself...but if u cant/dont want to...surely you can find a cheaper mechanic
 
Originally posted by: psteng19
Buy the parts, change it yourself and keep the car.
Rotors and pads are cheap.
Click to expand...

I concur. Hit up RockAuto.com to price out the parts. You can get rotors for $12 and brake pads for $10.
 
that's 400 with labor, bleeding, tax.....I'm telling her to try to get another estimate, at hte place she usually goes to, the place that gave the 400 estimate was a place that was changing the tires.


yah, i'm telling her to just keep the car...it gives her NO problems, not leaking any fluids, not rusting, it runs perfectly.
 
Originally posted by: Accipiter22
that's 400 with labor, bleeding, tax.....I'm telling her to try to get another estimate, at hte place she usually goes to, the place that gave the 400 estimate was a place that was changing the tires.


yah, i'm telling her to just keep the car...it gives her NO problems, not leaking any fluids, not rusting, it runs perfectly.
Click to expand...

try looking for a shadey mechanic who would be willing to do it for a side job for 100 bucks... i know they are out their... my rents did that with their car...

guy did on ok job... but messed up the back brakes... they were drums, i had to take them apart and redo them when i visited them... said their was scratching sound coming from the rear... spring popped off...
 
It's an American built, General Motors vehicle.
177K isn't much more than broken in.
Put new brakes on it and continue to enjoy the reliability and economy!
 
Thats pretty expensive.. the brake job is probably a 5 minute job per side..

I changed my Malibu's rotors and pads.. which I believe used the same style brakes. other then breaking the bolt holding the caliper on, I had no problems.

the first time because of the broken bolt it took me thirty minutes, because I had to find vice grips to remove the bolt.

the second side took 5 minutes.. most of which was jacking the car up and removing the wheel 🙂
 
yah....she lives in the city with a communal lot for cars so I can't really do it for her, and I wouldn't trust my ability on a car that belonged to someone I was related to....
 
keep the car and call around for estimates, all they have to do is look up the repair time in the manual and quote labor from there
 
Originally posted by: EngenZerO
as others said... find cheap rotors and pads and change em... its really not that bad...
Click to expand...
do not get cheap rotors, unless you want to replace them 6 months later.
 
Just get the rotors turned. It cost me 10 bucks to get the rotors turned on a full size truck a few weeks ago.
 
Brakes are wear items, so there's zero reason to even think of abandoning car just because of maintenance. But I agree that 400 is way too much. You can do the work yourself for a fraction of that.
 
Originally posted by: psteng19
Buy the parts, change it yourself and keep the car.
Rotors and pads are cheap.
Click to expand...

:thumbsup: and not that hard to do, if you can mod/change comp parts you can do this no prob...try it
 
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