# New Carquest brakes at 79,866 miles



## Barry Allen (Apr 18, 2018)

This past weekend I did a total brake job on my 2018 Cruze Diesel sedan. Carquest platinum hardware was installed all around, except for rear brake pads which are "gold" because the one-stop shop didn't have the platinum hardware and I wasn't going to make a long drive to find it.

Upon disassembly I did discover the Chevy dealership who did my clutch slave cylinder replacement under warranty apparently Loc-Tite the absolute SHIAT out of everything. It was pasted all over all the hardware and took a good amount of grinding with a wire wheel to get everything out of there for reassembly.

Stopping power is greatly enhanced. The stock brakes were to the point that I knew they were getting bad, and when taking them apart the rotors were absolutely trashed.


----------



## snowwy66 (Nov 5, 2017)

I wanna see what trashed rotors look like.


----------



## Barry Allen (Apr 18, 2018)

snowwy66 said:


> I wanna see what trashed rotors look like.


I should have taken photos. They were flaking off all around the edges.


----------



## Valpo Cruze (Feb 23, 2014)

This is a FUBAR set I changed recently for a friends kids car. The back was completely through the pad


----------



## Barry Allen (Apr 18, 2018)

The back of mine looked worse. The backs were flakey like a croissant.


----------



## Valpo Cruze (Feb 23, 2014)

Barry Allen said:


> The back of mine looked worse. The backs were flakey like a croissant.


I think I have another pair like that in my pile. A while back I decided to quit tossing rotors and take them for scrap since the scrap yard is just 3 miles away. Well it was a good idea at the time and now I have a pile in the corner of my garage. 1 set I changed for a friends kid had big ass chunks missing out of the friction surface. I had it at the house for a purge vent and then test drove it. They had described it as just a warped rotor. When I hit the brakes and almost broke tooth fillings I said time to fix is now.


----------



## Iamantman (Sep 24, 2018)

Barry Allen said:


> The backs were flakey like a croissant.


lol I love this quote

I'm actually impressed with the longevity on brakes on these cars. I looked at mine recently at just over 42k and they look brand new. I was kind of shocked. I have a light squeal in the morning for a few min but think that's probably just some light glazing because I largely drive like a granny most of the time.


----------



## Johnny B (Jun 4, 2019)

When I replaced my front brakes at about 60K my rotors were very rusted. That seems be be one of the weak areas of the stock brakes, the rotors weren't coated. Once I did the whole job I found out my poor pedal feel was from my brake fluid just needing to be changed out. The fluid in the pistons had turned very thick. When I bleed them I was shocked at how bad the fluid had gotten. Anyway, my pads and rotors would have probably lasted until 100K.


----------



## thebac (Jul 29, 2017)

Welcome to the rust belt. Ive found it to be a good idea to lube the slides on the calipers every year.


----------



## Barry Allen (Apr 18, 2018)

thebac said:


> Welcome to the rust belt


Yeah, like I haven't lived here for 4 decades already...


----------



## Barry Allen (Apr 18, 2018)

Johnny B said:


> brake fluid just needing to be changed out


I got a free flush of that in February when my transmission had problems and the fluid was changed under the warranty repair.


----------



## thebac (Jul 29, 2017)

Barry Allen said:


> Yeah, like I haven't lived here for 4 decades already...


Thats all?  J/K


----------



## Valpo Cruze (Feb 23, 2014)

Yeah the Midwest is the salt the roads heavy zone so depending on the car we get rust and rot. Depends on how well you take care of the car as well. Body panels and a few other items are all made with galvanized steel and should be fine. Some of the components not so much and even worst when you have dissimilar metals in contact. I always find it funny when a dealer tries to sell us rust proofing and the data they all use is for cars that are model year 1986 and older. 1987 and newer kills their data.


----------



## MP81 (Jul 20, 2015)

My Volt's rear brakes looked _great_ at ~33k miles...


























Still doesn't beat the one brake change on the Cav:







\


----------



## thebac (Jul 29, 2017)

Good grief.


----------



## JLL (Sep 12, 2017)

Barry Allen said:


> This past weekend I did a total brake job on my 2018 Cruze Diesel sedan. Carquest platinum hardware was installed all around, except for rear brake pads which are "gold" because the one-stop shop didn't have the platinum hardware and I wasn't going to make a long drive to find it.
> 
> Upon disassembly I did discover the Chevy dealership who did my clutch slave cylinder replacement under warranty apparently Loc-Tite the absolute SHIAT out of everything. It was pasted all over all the hardware and took a good amount of grinding with a wire wheel to get everything out of there for reassembly.
> 
> Stopping power is greatly enhanced. The stock brakes were to the point that I knew they were getting bad, and when taking them apart the rotors were absolutely trashed.


That sucks. It almost sounds like your Chevrolet dealer doesn't like you.


----------



## Barry Allen (Apr 18, 2018)

JLL said:


> It almost sounds like your Chevrolet dealer doesn't like you.


The feeling is mutual.

The prior repair from them was where they tried to double-bill - it was warranty work paid by GM and then they tried to stick me for about $1,400 for replacing the clutch that was damaged by the slave cylinder failure. After getting that straightened out I noticed the original slave cylinder repair involved replacing all the torque-to-yield bolts that are one-time use. This second time, the list of parts had none of the bolts on the invoice, meaning they likely reused all the single-use bolts.


----------



## JLL (Sep 12, 2017)

Barry Allen said:


> The feeling is mutual.
> 
> The prior repair from them was where they tried to double-bill - it was warranty work paid by GM and then they tried to stick me for about $1,400 for replacing the clutch that was damaged by the slave cylinder failure. After getting that straightened out I noticed the original slave cylinder repair involved replacing all the torque-to-yield bolts that are one-time use. This second time, the list of parts had none of the bolts on the invoice, meaning they likely reused all the single-use bolts.


Why do you still go there? They sound pretty bad.


----------



## Barry Allen (Apr 18, 2018)

JLL said:


> It almost sounds like your Chevrolet dealer doesn't like you.


Oh, and that repair was supposed to include an alignment because the entire front suspension was disassembled to drop the transmisison.

I pick the car up and the steering wheel takes about 5º of turn to drive the car straight. It's pulling hard to one side (don't remember which). I take it back and the before alignment measurements are WAY out of spec.

So, the short answer is the tech didn't do the alignment at all. Bolted everything back up and didn't do the alighment.


----------



## Barry Allen (Apr 18, 2018)

JLL said:


> Why do you still go there? They sound pretty bad.


I haven't been back after that. Not going to go back if I can avoid it.


----------



## Barry Allen (Apr 18, 2018)

JLL said:


> Why do you still go there? They sound pretty bad.


I went back because it was a warranty repair. My car broke when it was 45 miles away and I barely limped it back to where it was at home and could get off the highway and roll it into their parking lot. I had to get it there because I needed to borrow my parents' car for the two weeks the dealership had it for the warranty repair and it would have been massively inconvenient to get it repaired at the dealership 45 miles away from home. Lots of logistics issues in this one.

My car was out of warranty but the prior repair had a 2-year unlimited mileage warranty and I was at about 18 months.

This repair in February reset that to where I have until February 2024 for the same issue if it breaks.


----------



## Valpo Cruze (Feb 23, 2014)

Sounds like you need to escalate this to a higher level in Chevy with your concerns of the crappy work this shop is performing.


----------



## Barry Allen (Apr 18, 2018)

Valpo Cruze said:


> Sounds like you need to escalate this to a higher level in Chevy with your concerns of the crappy work this shop is performing.


I doubt anyone would care. 

Oh, wow, they did what car dealerships do and tried to scam someone and got caught? Meh, too bad, better luck next time getting your grift on.

I have no proof of it but I think the technician was personally insulted at me calling him out on his lies. The service writer called me on the phone to tell me it was going to be $1,300 out of my pocket to replace the clutch damaged by the failure of the slave cylinder. The clutch parts kit was about $350 so I was asking why I had to pay anything more than that price. I still wouldn't have been happy about the $350 but it's not the end of the world. The transmission is already being taken out to replace the slave cylinder, so how is it like $1,000 in labor (labor already being done under warranty!) to swap the clutch out when you have it taken apart. I went there and the technician himself stood there and lied straight to my face, telling me that the slave cylinder didn't require removing the transmission despite me having already had that job done once before and having seen the repair procedure online. I asked pointed questions and got lied to by the guy.

I walked two blocks to the Cadillac dealership and that service writer told me the opposite - adding a clutch replacement to the slave cylinder job adds only 0.2 hours of labor to the job (looks like 12 bolts to remove the clutch and then put 12 new bolts back in there) and even then it is something that should be entirely covered by the GM warranty as "damage cause to other parts by the failure of a warrantied part." I went back to Chevy and told them I'll just get out there and push the car the two blocks to the Cadillac dealership if I have to do that, and that's when they relented and said they'd take care of it. 

The service writer played dumb about the whole thing, and that might be true - they might be stupid and didn't understand it. Still, the technician lying to my face about the job was just amazing.

After calling them out on that I suspect the guy was super lazy about doing the work and didn't care one bit about replacing all the bolts.


----------

