Brake Replacement Cost: Why Prices Have Increased So Much

Brake Replacement Cost: What to Expect in 2024

The average cost for a basic brake job, which includes replacing the brake pads and resurfacing or replacing the rotors, typically ranges from $550 to $650 per axle (2024 prices). Brake replacement cost has gone up a lot from the typical $350-$450 before the pandemic. Here’s what’s driving the prices up.

Why brake replacement costs are up so much in 2024

1) There’s a huge shortage of skilled auto techs, which has caused shops to raise pay to compete for better technicians. It has also forced shops to recruit techs by paying sign-up bonuses. That has raised the hourly shop rates

2) Brake parts are more expensive due to lingering supply chain shortages that continue into 2024 and are expected to continue into 2025. The war in the Middle East and Piracy has caused havoc in the shipping industry, with ships forced to sail around the conflict areas to avoid attack. The different routing has caused serious delays, as well as shortages of shipping containers. In some cases, shipping has ballooned to $7,000 per container, compared to less than $700 pre-pandemic. Since most brake pads and rotors are manufactured in China, shipping rates and manufacturing shortages has raised the price of parts by almost 40%.

Brake replacement cost breakdown

Let’s look at the cost breakdown for a brake replacement on a 2019 Honda Odyssey

We’ll use ADVICS AD2089 Ultra-Premium OE Replacement Brake Pads @ 129/set
ADVICS C6F100U Ultra-Premium OE Replacement $145/each for a parts total of $419

Labor to replace front brake pads. 1.0 hrs, plus additional .5 hours to remove the caliper brackets to replace the rotor and clean the wheel hubs. 1.5 hours X $140 average hourly shop rate = $210

For a total brake replacement cost of $629.

What you need to know about brake parts to help you make the right decision when buying a brake job.

The Federal Government has rigid standards for brake parts installed on new vehicles. But there NO Government standards for brake parts sold by dealers, auto parts stores or local repair shops. NONE!

In the old days shop owners purchased brake parts from a handful of respected domestic brake parts suppliers. That’s changed. Today, the market is flooded with offshore brake parts, many of dubious quality. They’re sold online and in auto parts stores under a private label or store brand. Many are marketed as “premium or original equipment (OEM) quality” when they’re actually made with substandard materials that don’t perform as well or last as long as OEM parts.

If fact, testing performed by the Global Brake Safety Council shows that many of these “premium” brake pad products are of such low quality that the metal components rust and fail long before the brake pad friction material wears out.³  (See link at bottom of post)

The problem isn’t limited to just brake pads. Offshore brake rotors often don’t match the car maker’s original design, resulting in improper cooling and early failure.

Car makers invest significant time and resources to come up with just the right metallurgy and cooling vane configurations for the brake rotors on every model. In fact, there are currently over 600 different cooling vane configurations for today’s cars. These exotic vane configurations are costly to reproduce, so many aftermarket rotor manufacturers simply build their rotors with the cheapest cooling vane configuration and the least expensive metallurgy. How would you possibly know if you didn’t get the same rotor as original equipment? Well, your brakes won’t cool as well, so they’ll wear out faster. In other words, you won’t know until you realize that your brakes wore out faster than the factory brakes. By then it’s too late to do anything about it. That’s why it’s so important to demand high quality OE rotors from the shop. Ask the shop to show you the new rotors. If you have to, shine a flashlight into the air gap between the rotor plates to examine the cooling vanes.

How the low-quality brake parts scam works

Unscrupulous shops purchase the cheapest, lowest quality brake “premium” pads and rotors and offer you a lifetime warranty. However, the lifetime warranty only applies to the brake pads. It doesn’t cover the rotors or the labor. You hear “lifetime warranty” and walk away thinking you’re protected in the event they fail.

Those low-quality brake pads will fail, and when you return to the shop, they’ll be more than happy to replace them for free. But you’ll have to pay for the new rotors and the labor. So your lifetime warranty brake pads will actually cost you about $400 when they fail. You pay the bill and leave the shop thinking it was just a fluke, and now you’ve got new pads and new rotors.

But you’ll be back for another “free warranty” replacement in another year or so. This will repeat over and over again until you catch on to the scam. By the time you realize you’ve been fleeced, you’ll have paid many times over for those low quality brake pads.

Do you need new rotors with every brake job?

In the old days carmakers equipped their vehicles with thick heavy brake rotors and drums that could be re-machined several times to bring them back to like-new condition. The process of reconditioning a rotor or drum is called “turning” or “machining.” To recondition, the technician removed the rotor or drum from the vehicle, mounted it in a special brake lathe, and cut away a very small layer of metal to produce a new flat surface.

That’s changed. Today’s vehicles have much lighter weight brake rotors and many times they’re simply not thick enough to be machined once they’ve worn. Many brake rotors are so thin from the factory that it’s impossible to machine off a portion of the rotor face and still have enough left to meet minimum thickness safety standards.

To determine whether your rotors can be reconditioned by machining, the tech will measure the rotor thickness, examine the depth of any deep grooves in the rotor face and then consult the rotor’s minimum thickness or “discard” specification. The rotor must be at least .030″ thicker than it’s discard thickness after machining. You need that extra .030″ to allow for wear with the new brake pads.

Even if the shop determines your rotor is machinable, it’s may actually be cheaper to replace rotors with new units, rather than pay a shop $140 to machine them. That’s why most brake jobs include new friction material and rotors or drums. New rotors cost around $40-$80 each.

What’s NOT included in a typical brake job?

A brake job does not include new brake calipers or caliper brackets (disc brakes) wheel cylinders (drum brakes), flexible and rigid brake lines, master cylinder or parking brake components. They’re all extra.

Most cars and trucks don’t need those parts during the first 150K miles of use. But you wouldn’t know it from the way unscrupulous shops run their business. Rip-off shops recommend new brake calipers for every brake job that comes into their shop, whether the vehicle needs them or not. Replacing perfectly good calipers can easily add $400 or more to your brake job cost.

There are times when calipers or caliper brackets must be replaced and I’ve listed those instances below. Unless your vehicle fits the descriptions shown, you should not need new calipers. If the shop recommends new calipers, ask why and see if their reasons stack up to the information shown below.

When should you replace brake calipers

Brake calipers typically last 150K miles or more. But the brake caliper abutment areas and caliper slide pins can rust and bind long before then, causing brake release issues. Binding causes the brake pads to wear unevenly, make noise and require more braking effort. But rust and binding issues can be fixed without a full brake caliper replacement.

Any competent shop can clean the rust in the brake pad abutment areas and apply corrosion-resistant brake grease. Corroded slide pins and protective rubber boots can be replaced separately for about $22 per wheel.

Even if the corrosion in the caliper bracket bores is severe, the shop can replace the bracket separately for about $32. In the vast majority of cases, you do not need to replace the entire brake caliper to fix corrosion issues!

These conditions do NOT require new brake calipers

• Corroded or seized caliper slide pins. Corroded caliper slide pins can be replaced with new parts for about $11 per wheel.

• Corroded bores on caliper bracket. Severely corroded caliper brackets can be replaced with a rebuilt bracket for around $32 each.

• Degraded or torn caliper slide pin boots can be replaced for $11 per wheel.

• The brake pads show uneven wear. Uneven wear is most often caused by rust buildup or corroded caliper slide pins. Fix the problem with new slide pins and possibly a rebuilt bracket and clean off the rust buildup instead of buying new brake calipers.

©, 2016 Rick Muscoplat

Save

Save

Save