Hello folks, I need a piece of advice here.
My wife has a Maxima 99, now about 60k, no problems never, used to run like a charm, braking well, accelerating, you name it. After a minor fender scratch at 48k miles I decided to check wheel alignment, just in case, and a mechanic pointed to me that the brake pads are running low, on all four wheels. So, I decided to trust this job to professionals, for which they charged me $529.35. Unfortunately, my wife started to complain about ugly squeaks when braking in reverse, and the squeaking becomes louder and louder over time, so outside people would turn heads to it. Not good. Since the pads came with "lifetime warranty", I brought the car back to the repair garage, they kept it for 2 hours, and said that they fixed the problem. However, the squeaks re-appeared on the next day or so, and it's still squeaking, and getting worse every day.
I wondered around with co-workers, and they suggested that it is quite likely that the garage put in very cheap pads, that's the problem. So I decided to do the job myself - I've done it once on an old Infinity J30 (including rear crossmember and whole left wheel suspension BTW!). For the J30 I had not a single problem, caliper pistons moved freely back, new pads went in like a charm, and the J30 runs and brakes perfectly since then.
Unfortunately, that was not the case with Maxima. I found that I can't retract the piston back not a single millimeter! When I press the brake pedal, the piston goes out, but I can't depress it in no matter what I do! After looking on the web, I found that it looks like my pistons were cocked, and it was done at the professional garage (I found a charge for "caliper rebuild" in the invoice, why the heck would they do this?). I left the other wheel untouched, just in case that I might need a proof of that. According to Nissan Maxima Haynes Repair Manual, I should be able to depress the piston into the caliper before removing anything, using a C-clamp. I tried, gently,
it doesn't move at all, while there is a room of 2-3mm (the pads are pretty new).
So, the question: is there anything I can do to convince the garage to do the job right, re-build the pistons, preferably at their expense? Is there any way to deal with this? I am really pissed off, I hoped for a 2-hour exercise, but it turned out that I am now without brakes ...
Thanks, - Alex