Hello folks,

My 2011 Toyota 4Runner sr5 4x4 v6 4.0l 128k mi was brought in for a 120k maintanence.

They did the routine maintenance, and are also suggesting I do the following:

1. Serpentine belt $228 installed
2. 2 front brake calipers (one frozen) $700 something installed
3. Both front rotors: $300 installed
Front brake pads: I think they said $200 installed
4. Spark plugs: think they said $250 installed

I told them to go ahead and replace belt only and I’ll be shopping around for quotes for the rest.
To me the rest seem VERY high. I’m in western ma, thoughts?

I did self maintenance on this car, and reason I brought it in was because it was making a whining noise, and I figured belt was worn. Is it just me, or are these prices high and can be done for cheaper in a smaller mechanic shop?

Seems steep to me.

For comparison new front rotors and OEM brake pads on my RX350 was only $300 total at the Lexus dealership. New OEM rotors are only $75ea and pads are $50/set. So there's $200 in parts and it takes a total of 8 fasteners per side to swap them out - 6 of which are the lug nuts. They're charging you $500 for the same thing on a 4runner. It should take less than an hour including putting the new rotors on a lathe - although I doubt they do that with new OEM ones.

Replacing a caliper is pretty unusual. They should generally be good for the life of the vehicle. I'd be skeptical that they're actually frozen. There's certainly no reason to do both if one is bad. Strangely enough Lexus replaced both rear shocks when one leaked on my RX - but it was free under warranty so who am I to complain? I've never had any work done on my 4runner other than oil changes, so I don't know if Toyota has similar guidelines. Seems questionable to me.

The OEM belt is about $100 list price and around $75 from most places and takes about 5 minutes to install.

In short - yeah, you're paying too much.

Dealer prices are dealer prices... that said, nothing you listed is complicated or special in terms or labor, knowledge or tools. Any small mechanics shop can knock out that work for a lot less.

Alternately, all that work is really easy to do if you were so inclined.

$20 gets you an OEM quality US/Japanese manufactured belt from Bando. Most likely what an independent shop would use.

Spark plugs on the 4.0 V6 is very easy to do since everything is accessible.
$5 per plug and this tool for $12 and you have yourself a party... https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Rotors / pads are routine items... Any mechanic worth his salt can do it for a lot less and still make money. If you can take a tire off, you can do brakes.

The only thing that is of concerns is that frozen caliper... I thought that stuff was resolved with the 5th Gens. I did get a quote once from a Toyota dealer for my 4th Gen, and they quoted about $1000 for just one OEM caliper. I ended up doing it myself for 1/10th the cost. Also a bit curious as to why they recommend you change both?

Even if you were to change out the caliper, they should do the dang rotors and pads for free (charge you only for parts) since all that junk needs to come off anyways. Seems like some double dipping on labor.

I would shop around.

The prices are very high, i had the same issue regarding the brakes and they quoted me around $1200 for front caliper,rotor,pad and labor. I ended up doing some research on good parts and took it to a local mechanic and it cost a 1/3 of the dealership price.

They are stacking up the labor costs for the calipers, rotor and pads. They are all in there together, it's not separate labor. Typical high dealer pricing.

Just youtube how to change all that. Very easy, straightforward stuff.

I’m happy I said no thanks, I’ll be shopping around.
I decided that I’m going to do it all with a buddy, or should I say, my buddy will do it while I watch. I’ll post an update once it’s done. I’m kind of skeptical myself that everything they told me actually needs to be replaced.

It’ll be a win win since I’ll learn and be able to do it myself next time

Sorry for the OP's cost of repairs, but to me, this is another reminder to try and perform routine maintenance on the brake calipers. I have read of multiple instances of calipers freezing especially in areas where salt is used in the winter and requiring replacement of the calipers.

Do it with a friend... get ur hands dirty. Its pretty easy and there are plenty of youTube and forums posts on it already.

Even if you bought tools for the very first time for everything you plan on doing, you would still save a boat load of cash.

That's pretty much how I built up my entire tool collection... paid for itself on the first use.

1 - The part cost less than $75 (Non OEM) and you can replace it yourself in 15 minutes and barely get your hands dirty.

2 - A lot of talk about frozen calipers on this board. I've been doing brakes since high school. Probably well over a 100 cars. Never once have I seen a "frozen" caliper. For it to be frozen would mean it's not working at, so no braking on that wheel. I'm sure many will pile on and tell me how much I don't know. I'm just telling you my personal experience, this is probably BS. It could happen but, it would be strange.

3 - A complete set of pads and rotors, front and back is only $300 (OEM) and can be installed in less than 3 hours.

4 - Haven't done mine yet, but even at $10 (high est) per plug you're looking at $60. I think @Antman did a write up on changing his plugs...

So I see $400-$450 in parts and some garage time, no way I would pay the dealer almost $2k for that.....

This is double dipping as you call it is standard Dealership/Automotive industry practice.

Maybe everyone knows this but just in case.....

For those that are unaware, all vehicle manufacturers publish the labor hours needed to do almost all maint jobs on their vehicles. So if you need a caliper replaced, they look up the factory quote for the amount of time to do the job, multiply that by their labor rate per hour, add in the parts and thats the quote. They don't even look at the vehicles, because they all just use the book data and never leave the desk chair. I'm sure the data is all online or computerized now, but it used to be published in books. Big Books.

Doesn't matter if you have to pull the rotors and pads to do it, if you change the rotors and pads, they add the published time for all of those jobs up and that's what they charge. If they get done faster or slower, it doesn't matter, they charge the same either way. They also mark up the parts about 10-20%, They rarely sell you the parts for what you can buy them for online.
This is how they get ahead of the game and build those fancy showrooms.

FYI, this is also how they pay the mechanics doing the work. You do a 12.4 hour job in 5 hours, you get paid for 12.4 hours, (because that's what the customer paid for) on the other hand if the job takes you 15 hours, you get 12.4 hours.


Now you can find local shops that have access to the data and choose to give you a break on multiple related jobs or just charge you for the actual time it takes instead of what the book says. They can also beat the prices on parts because they usually won't use OEM unless you specifically request it. Some parts are OEM only of course because no one else makes them, but certainly not any of the parts you mention fall into that category.