Brake Service Dealership or Non Dealership

I really don't understand why everyone is talking about bleeding brakes with a pad change. If you have ever done a brake pad change on anything you can certainly do it on this car. And if you did have to bleed the brakes the fronts are just like any other car, have someone push the pedal a few pumps while holding your finger over the loosened valve. The piston is composite so there is no rebuilding the caliper. Just push the piston back in with a c clamp or something and put your pads on. Pull the bolt looking things I highlighted in yellow and put brake grease on it generously and put it back into the rubber bellows looking thing. Make sure it slides in and out real smooth and put together with your new pads. I just did this fun a couple of weeks ago replacing a front axle bearing. 300 dollars..are you kidding me?


Do remove the power from the battery cable from your 12 volt battery so the electronics don't do anything you don't want them to do. Otherwise I have heard stories about the piston blowing out when the caliper is off the wheel. Avoid it by just disconnecting the battery.

And all this talk is if you need new pads. your complaint on the ticket says noisy brakes. If your pads are not worn down to replacement time then just live with the noise or get some emery cloth and take the shine off the rotors. You need to do that whether you put new pads on. That should stop your noise.

 

I'm not sure anyone's saying you need to bleed bolts with a pad change, in this thread. It's basically two services, related, but not one requires the other. There is a lot of talk of that, never the less: people saying you should open the bleed valve when pushing the piston back. I've never done that, never had problems.

But I do subscribe to periodic brake fluid replacement. Toyota Canada is now saying tri-yearly or 48K kms, whichever comes first. Maybe commencing 2014 model year? Honda's been saying this for decades.

It could be too, that periodic brake fluid replacement negates the issues associated with pushing back pistons without opening the bleed bolt?

 

I have had 1 master cylinder fail one time in my life from pushing a piston back in using a c clamp. That was on a Honda and a master cylinder from autozone and I have work on a lot of brakes on a lot of different cars. Opening the bleed valve to relieve the pressure on the piston certainly wouldn't hurt, and if one kept their finger on the hole in the bleeder and tightened it back up after the piston was back they still would not need to bleed the brakes. As far as fluid changes go..I would give a higher priority to coolant changes. Even with above 5 percent moisture in the fluid it still works fine and you would never notice it on the pedal.

 

That's interesting: put your finger on it to prevent air getting in.

 

To a limited extent, it might work the other way, too: opening the bleeders to push the pistons back ejects a decent volume of fluid (the caliper bores, if the pistons were near fully extended, have to represent a volume at least comparable to the whole length of brake line serving them), which you then replace by topping the reservoir with new fluid, accomplishing an occasional, partial fluid replacement. The fluid that got pushed out is probably the most degraded, being dead-ended in the caliper, where the braking heat is generated.

Not a complete-enough flush to satisfy the fluid-flushing purists, but as a practical matter, it might be good enough; hobbit's experience with brake fluid test strips would suggest that being brake fluid in a Prius is a pretty easy life.

-Chap

 

That's the way I bleed brakes when I have to. I loosen the valve and put my finger over it creating a 1 way valve and have someone push the pedal all the way to the floor then let it up. Squirts a little mess but if you have done it a lot you can really aim the stream. I have the vacuum bleeder as well which I use if I am using air tools but if I have any help I just do it with a foot and a finger.

Rear brakes I use tech stream and just open the valve for a second. That's really the lazy mans way to get er done with the prius. Almost wish you didn't need the pedal for the fronts.

 

I pretty much followed @NutzAboutBolts to the letter, except did order per Repair Manual, and no suction, just tube hooked up.

With the car in invalid mode, it went fine: rear is easy due to the pump assist, and front I was careful to follow the video technique. Open/close real fast, while my (dw) assistant tromped then stead push on brake.

Brakes ended up nice and firm.

 

The dealer I use charged me $90 twice and $110 once for Transmission Fluid Exchange.
There is no flush, I would avoid any dealer that offers flush for a Prius.

 

damn!

Maybe I should be charging 20$ per video on my YouTube channel for these services instead of FREE hahah oh well

 

90K?
Are you sure the pads are thin enough to need replacement?
I have 120K and the pads look like they'll make it to 225K. Did you visually inspect the pads?

 

I _have_ 226K & will need pads at some point I'm sure - I haven't recently measured, but it is close to the top of my to-do list

 

The sense I get, is that owners are more and more becoming empowered resorting to DIY, and the dealership has a diminishing pool of gullible customers, so raise their prices, which in turn accelerates the exodus.

Watch @NutzAboutBolts, pick the ones you think you can handle, talk to several dealership and/or independent shops for the rest.

My take, regarding what numbers they should have come back with, and/or comment:

Transaxle fluid change: $80~100
Transaxle flush: pointless, unnecessary
Front brakes: $175~200
Rear brakes: $175~200
Engine coolant change: $100
Inverter coolant change: $100
Brake fluid change: $100
Spark plug change: $150~200 (due to excessive labour to access)

These are reasonable numbers too, not low-balling.

 

I think those are quite reasonable prices for a dealer. The fluid is going to cost 50 bucks so he is doing it for 100 labor, Im even ok with 300 bucks for the fronts provided that includes caliper rebuild, rotor turning and oem parts. you have a reasonable dealer there. I didn't know any existed!

And if they didn't show you the need for pads at the shop you should jack up the car and pull the tire off and have a look for yourself. That's easy and if it goes well then you should be comfortable swapping the pads cause the most work is pulling the tire and greasing up the pins.

 

Both the engine and the inverter are cooled by Toyota Long Life Coolant. (or equivalent)

They are separate systems, with their own pumps, reservoirs, etc. The Inverter runs cooler than the engine. (that system also cools the transaxle)

Here is a picture of the coolant channels in the inverter: (there are more fins where there is the most heat, this is a Gen 2)




The hoses that make the system in my Prius v.

As you can see, in the v, the top of the radiator is for the inverter. I think it is the bottom in Gen 2.

 

There’s no such thing as a transmission flush on a Prius.
I almost think you would go in with a reporter and make them explain how they’d flush a Prius transaxle, when it has no transmission cooler or transmission fluid lines.

 

Any competent mechanic can do brake work on a Prius. Besides putting the car into “invalid mode” to do the brake flush, there’s nothing special to it at all.

Ok... there is one other thing, which is that the rear caliper have a U-shaped indentation which must be correctly oriented so that a pin on the rear of the brake pad fits within the U.

Don’t get me wrong; there are a lot of idiots in independent car repair shops. But these brakes are really easy to work on.

 

Which fluid are you talking about. The Toyota ATF-WS for transaxle fluid change? Last time I bought that it was $9.14 per liter, in Canadian dollars. Converted to US dollars for four US quarts comes to $26.98.



The labour involved is simpler than an oil and filter change.

Caliper rebuild? You're recommending that? Even rotor turning is overkill. The pads (and new shims, if you really want to gold-plate the job) are around $100, likely under, in the US.

Always the joker.