overheating driver's side rear wheel

[dferrero]

It's been very cold the past week, between 0 at night and 36 during the day. A few evenings after pulling into the garage after work I smelled something like burning circuits, you know, that awful smell? I would open the hood, smell nothing, chock it up to something bad is happening but don't know what. Well tonight, I smelled it again, same thing, couldn't find the source in the font. As I squeezed past the rear of my car (narrow garage), I felt an enormous amount of heat coming off the rear driver's side wheel. It was probably 20 degrees outside. I touched the rims and they were very warm, don't ask me why I decided to touch the brake disk...I did compare the other 3 wheels, even touching the disk and none of them were hot, just slightly warm. A friend had replaced all 4 sets of brake pads about 2 months ago. He felt the disks (rotors), were smooth and thick enough and didn't need to be turned or replaced. I have had a few other strange behaviors: Twice, when accelerating from a stop, the car felt like it was surging forward, then decelerating, then surging. It would do this 'bucking' thing about 4 times before settling down. I couldn't tell if I was just hitting the gas pedal wrong (you know that pivot point issue that the dealer wanted $390 to fix). During a recent 'bucking' episode (it happened 2x) I noticed once the VDC light was flashing but I was on dry pavement. The friend mechanic suggested that my brake caliper might be 'shot'. I do not use the emergency brake much at all. I have 130k miles on the '02 Q45.

I am faced with options 1) waiting for the friend to become available to help me (could be 2-3+ days), borrowing wife's car to get to work and waiting on him to troubleshoot in this cold (he doesn't have a heated garage), 2) bring it to local PepBoys and hope they can fix it properly (a few months ago Pepboys replaced my starter with a remanufactured one for $450 after dealer diagnosed and wanted $995 to do it.), or 3) bring it to the dealer and prepare myself for 'another $1000+ repair'. Any mechanic-minded users want to weigh in with possible problems, repair costs, advice?

[dferrero]

convenience trumps cost. I choose option (3) but told the service advisor that I need a discount and if he works with me on cost, I would get the repair done there. He waived the diagnostic fee(s) they normally charge. I am now waiting for the repair estimate. I believe the problem is a brake caliper going bad. I seem to recall a website that allowed you to research repair costs for your vehicle. Does anyone have that URL? Any idea what that should cost?

[Q451990]

I'm not sure about a web site to estimate repair costs.

Assuming it's a caliper, I'd guess 2 hours time plus parts? Wild guess... but it shouldn't take an experienced tech too much time to do the swap and flush the fluid.

Retail for the caliper assembly $267.02
Retail for rear brake pads $91.10
Fluid $15.00?

So maybe $500-600 total?

It'll be interesting to see how close this comes to what you hear from them...

Good luck!

Heath

[qship96]

same thing happened to me last year....I ordered a Centric rebuilt caliper for $50 and Akebono pro-act pads for $45 both from Amazon and fixed myself for less than $100 total in my driveway.Took less than 1 hour including jacking up car with trunk jack.

[dferrero]

I like the DIY savings! Do you need to bleed the brake lines after replacing calipers? What special tools did you need?
here's the breakdown - I haven't done the repair...looking for more affordable path...

Dealer:
replace rear rotors: $315
replace l/r caliper: $535
resurface front rotors: $260
replace right outer tiered end & align: $350

A local tire shop I've done business with quoted me:
$645 for 4 new rotors + rear caliper and rear brake pads
$150 for l/r tiered end & align.

[Q451990]

You shouldn't need to replace the flex hose for a caliper replacement, just the copper washers that go on either side of the banjo fitting. Nissan sells a rebuild kit if you want to go as far as refurbishing them yourself.

Check out your car's factory service manual to get a better feel for what's involved. http://www.infinitiservicemanual.com

Should be pretty much bolt-on, bolt off and flush the brake lines with fresh fluid.

Heath

[dferrero]

As a final note on this thread:
I had a friend do the work. He replaced all 4 rotors and pads, the left front inner tie-rod, and the left rear brake caliper at a total of $745. I still need to get a 4 wheel alignment but he counted the threads on the tie-rod and got it very close so I'm waiting until I am in the shop for swapping the 3 season tires for the snows on now.