The Online Photographer

Just out of curiosity, who told you that it's normal for new brakes to make noise? If you install coated rotors (a wise choice in the northeast for rust prevention) you might get a very slight noise for a few stops until the pads scrape the coating from the engagement area, but otherwise you shouldn't have any noise.

You will get noise and rapid wear if you put new pads on rusty or worn rotors. Is that what happened?

Paying $400 or $452 for a full brake job isn't a bad price; for just the fronts it's pretty steep in my opinion, especially if you weren't satisfied with the quality of the work from the first mechanic.

For comparison, I just replaced front and rear pads and rotors on my wife's Nissan Leaf with high-end coated parts ordered from RockAuto. Total cost including shipping was $250. My labor cost my wife one large homemade pizza.

I understand that many folks don't want to work on their own car, or are scared of making a mistake. However, there is something to be said for:
1) learning new skills, especially if can they save you money;
2) having full control of the cost and scheduling of your car maintenance; and
3) being fully confident in the quality of the work done to your car.

If that's not your thing, then you have the right idea in finding and sticking with a trusted mechanic. Why not make it an official monogamous repair relationship and schedule an annual service and inspection appointment for your car.

As an aside, I'm not convinced that Napa sells budget (price) parts. I just checked and their cheapest non-coated (i.e., rapid rust) front + rear pads and rotors for my wife's car are $280 with tax. Napa's closest equivalent to the quality parts I bought and installed are $450 with tax. Ouch.

It certainly isn’t normal for new brakes to make chirping and grinding noises! So you paid 50% extra overall, drove about with possibly dangerous brakes for a few weeks, and will now need to get them re-done sooner than normal because you got substandard parts! I hope you went back to the fist guy and told him you intend to blacken his reputation hereabouts.

There was a time when a backyard mechanic could do a lot on most cars. Today, you can barely identify what's under the hood. So you are at the mercy of the honesty or lack of when you take a car in for maintenance.

I took my car in for two tires and an oil change a while back. My chair in the waiting area gave me a clear view of my car on the lift. Two tires were changed out and I was called up to the counter. I reminded the person about the oil change which he assured me had been accomplished. I verbally said that I didn't see that happen, to which he said I was wrong. I walked into the garage (against all the signs that said no customers allowed), pulled the dipstick out which was covered in the sludge of old oil.

They charged me for the tires and informed me that I was not welcome back. I wonder how many people were not able to observe what was not done to their cars.

When I lived in Switzerland (Zürich) I had a guy who did the maintenance for all my manual cameras (Bronicas, Rolleiflex, Olympus OM and Leica (M3))
Perfect service, and not so expensive as I gave him all my business. Mainly CLI but the occasional bigger stuff like a shutter curtain for the M3, and shutter calibration for the Rollei). I preferred dealing with one person, rather than opting for any kind of specialists (even if you could find them)
And I loved going in and giving him and his wife the work

Back in the UK now..... not so sure where to go

I did the same thing last year, but with dentists.

I hadn't been to the dentist since 2019 because -- you know why -- and I clearly had some cavities that needed filling. But my dentist of 20 years was now quite far away, and I finally bit the bullet and located a highly-recommended dentist near me.

Well, after the visit, the sheer amount of work the dentist proposed was daunting. Don't get me wrong! My mouth is prone to cavities, and it was quite possible I needed every recommended filling! But you hear stories about dentists on the make, so I wanted to be sure.

I booked an appointment with my previous dentist, being very up front about what I was up to and that I would pay out of pocket. They were very understanding, and fully supportive of my transition to a nearby practitioner. Turns out the new dentist was on the money. My old dentist confirmed every cavity and wished me good luck in the repairs.

I'm now 3/4 of the way done with repairs, and I haven't had to lose a night of sleep whether I was being taken for a ride.

The good thing about your Honda, Mike, is that any experienced mechanic has probably worked on one or two of them before. The bad thing is that there are probably no Honda specialists nearby, outside of a dealer's shop. It's been my choice to work with independent brand specialist shops, who work cheaper than the dealer but have the same sort of expertise and daily experience with the cars. They know what tends to go wrong, and they know where to check for early signs of trouble.

That's been necessary because I've owned low-volume and/or highly strung automobiles: mostly VWs, but also SAABs, Audis, and now a Mercedes. You really want to stay away from dealer pricing with those, but you also need to make sure only the finest, most delicious fluids and oils are used. (Do you know how much synthetic oil a Merc V6 holds? Eight quarts.) I don't mind paying more for maintenance, though - it's those repairs that kill ya.

At least I can hire a mechanic. For my first ten years of car ownership, I had a rare, rear-engined German sedan that was utterly unlike a VW, made by a dead brand, and most mechanics refused to look at it. It forced me to be my own mechanic, up to and including an engine replacement. Those were the days...

I have a new shape Toyota Rav4 hybrid and the brakes have something like 100,000 miles of life left, due to the regeneration mode, etc..

A few years ago, my M4 needed quite a bit of repair work doing, so I sent it to Malcolm Taylor. He did a great job, replacing the shutter, fixing the loose elements in the rangefinder and general servicing. It works a dream, so silent, so pleasant and nicer than my 'Classic' Leitz M6.

Malcom was entrusted by Dr Leitz to restore a great many early Leicas, including the original UR. An interesting read about Malcolm is to be found in this link:

https://www.worldphotoadventure.com/in-conversation-with-malcolm-taylor/

I’ve work on my own cars for 50 years. Disk brakes are far easier to do than the old drum brakes by the way. I have never had new brakes make noise after doing them. If they make noise after a day there is something wrong with them.

I read the forum for my Jeep Patriot to stay abreast of known issues. The consensus among folks who do their own work is that third party parts are now crap…although I don’t think that applies to most brake pads. It’s not unusual for a third party part (especially electronic) to be bad right out of the box. Everyone now recommends paying top dollar for OEM parts. It wasn’t that long ago that a shadetree mechanic would never think of “wasting money” on OEM. I assume this shift is due to pandemic supply line changes?

My vehicle is so incredibly basic that so far I’ve been able to do all the needed repairs myself. But to be honest, it hasn’t really needed much…knock on wood. My naturally aspirated, port injected 2.4 L World engine was designed by the Global Engine Alliance (Chrysler, Mitsubishi, Hyundai) with most of the design work being done by Hyundai and the transmission is actually made by Hyundai. So far, so good.

Your dilemma reminded me of an old Seinfeld episode I stumbled upon recently. Jerry had a falling out with his mechanic, David Puddy. It seems that Puddy was doing Jerry’s move on Elaine without permission. Jerry said Puddy could do the move but only when he was out of the city. As soon as Jerry’s car broke down he changed his tune and said, “What was I thinking. A good mechanic is worth his weight in gold.” You are lucky to have a good mechanic nearby.

Mike,
Make friends with the Honda specialist.
Make an annual booking for late spring or early winter.
Listen to him, and listen to your car.

I wish I had the same degree of confidence in car dealer service departments that some other readers have. Early this year I had to take my Forester into Subaru so they could replace a faulty sensor (it sometimes didn't know the car was in Park when you turned off the ignition, and wouldn't let you remove the key).

Since I needed an oil change, I figured I'd have them do it since the car was already there. No problem. When they finished, though, they came back and recommended $1600 in additional service. On a car with 16,000 miles on it. I looked at the rather extensive list of items, and found that they had not discovered any actual issues with the car, just a bunch of additional things to inspect. I declined them all, and when I went to pick up the car, the guy in the service department who originally wrote up my order said there was nothing on the list that really needed attention, and my car was in fine shape.

A few months later I mentioned this to the mechanic who had serviced my previous car (and who will service my Subaru going forward), and he said that this tactic is becoming more common, at least in the Chicago area. It's a way to upsell service, even when additional service isn't required.

Someone commented about the difficulty of servicing drum brakes. Most of you probably don't deal with them anymore, but my 2010 Honda still has them on the rear. Luckily, Honda put two of them on the car, so you always have one to refer to when working on the other. Once you complete the first, you now have it as a model for the second. Easy peasy.

I've been doing my own car maintenance and some repairs for several years now, and its saved me so much money. The slippery slope all started with a Scotty Kilmer video (which I think I came across on here, Mike). I started doing my oil changes and the more I videos I watched, the more maintenance items I added. I started to slip into small repairs and gradually took on larger ones including air conditioning, suspension work, power steering pump replacement, brakes, etc. With each job I did I would look online for average repair costs to either inspire me take on a job myself or increase my sense of satisfaction with what I had accomplished. I am not mechanically-inclined, but I am pleased with the things you can learn from YouTube.