Replacing front brake rotors - 4wd, any tips?

First brake job on my truck. Never replaced brakes on an older 4wd before, but done lots of other brake jobs.

Shop wanted $561 to replace pads and rotors. Should the price tell me how difficult the job is, or it is easy enough to do it myself?

What can I expect that is different from your average front brake rotor replacement?

Shops prices are expensive because of the cost of labor! Around her its like $65-75 for an hour of labor!

If you don't have a manual go here:


Fill in the fields for what your truck is and it should give you a guide on repairing your truck as well as exploded diagrams, etc.

your looking at about $50 a rotor & $50 for pads, and about two hours of your time......as hex said, the cost is indicitave of them bending you over the barrel!!! if you have mechanical skill, proper tools, and a little time, do it yourself, if not, its better to let a shop do it, but one that is a little more reasonable than $500

its totally different but i recently replaced the rotors and pads on my 4x4 ranger and it was like $78 for rotors and $38 or so for pads - and i had it done in half an hour or so. that was the lifetime warrantied stuff from autozone, duralast gold i think...

The shop told me that it was more expensive because it was 4x4. They said that the bearings needed to be repacked and everything.

What I want to avoid is some nightmare hub pulling task and beating on it for 4 hours to get it to break loose.

u can rent a hub puller from autozone

dude they are just trying to make money.... no need to replace hubs and all that crap.... rub your finger over the rotor where the pads push up against it (front and back) if it feels smooth as a babies ass nothing to worry about, just change the pads, if its bumpy then you need to take the rotors down to napa and have them turned (if they aren't in to bad of shape napa will tell you if they are in to bad of shape).... should be like $10-$15 per rotor, goto autozone and pick you up some brake pads.... wam bam thank you mam

Not too bad so far. But, while I have everything taken apart....

I hate that. Simple brake job turns into wheel bearings and ball joints. Ball joints spewed grease all over, so they were shot and needed to be replaced. Wheel bearings, well they just fall out, and are pretty cheap, so I might as well replace them.

As for the rotors/hubs, lots of bolts and things to remove, but no nasty pulling or banging.

ah preventive maintaince....key word preventive, might as well fix/replace it all while your there, it will save you some grief from murphy down the road! he likes to show up when you least expect or need him to!