Wow, that was SO much easier than I was expecting.
I did have some expert help. I'll refer to him hereafter as Mechanic Buddy (MB). So there were three of us: self, MB, and his old Army buddy, C. MB has worked on his own vehicles for years, and has all the tools you'd expe ct. In maybe 10 minutes we had the car up and the old pads off on one side . It wasn't C's first rodeo either.
The old rotors were in terrible shape, as the first mechanic had said. The y were quite worn, and super rusty. We knocked a hell of a lot of flakes o f rust out of the general area where the rotors had been. Fortunately, not hing else (such as hubs, calipers, or suspension bits) seemed to be rusty. MB had seen worse. C attacked the works with a wire brush, and had it spi c & span in short order.
BTW, a 2011 Mazda 2 does not use screws to hold the rotors on. They are he ld on strictly by the presence of the wheel & lug nuts. The old rotors wer e a little sticky, but not rusted hard to the hub, probably because the hub itself did not rust. There was some corrosion at the wheel/rotor interfac e, but not much on the wheel itself (they are aluminum wheels). Aluminum d oes corrode, but it all appeared to be superficial, thank goodness.
I clarified with the car's owner that they use sand most of the time up the re, not salt, to make the roads drivable in winter. Still, even some road salting, and a harsh humid climate, will combine to do a number on anything that can rust.
The old brake pads weren't completely gone, but were getting there. Maybe
2mm of material was left. Bonus points: I accidentally bought fancy pads w ith a Teflon coating on the back, so brake caliper lube was unnecessary.
I'm still not sure why the old works got in such bad shape. It was as if t he pads had worn a little unevenly. There was a tangible trough in the rot ors where pads made contact, vs. the completely smooth and level feel of th e new rotors. Weird.
For those keeping score at home: as of Saturday the car had about 69,000 km /43,000 miles on it. So the brakes were most likely factory equipment, as was the battery.
We got a good laugh, noticing that the brake calipers had Ford markings on them. Fasteners were metric, as expected.
The whole job took maybe an hour.
We elected not to swap out brake fluid. We did add some, to get it up to t he right level, after everything else was done. MB said the old fluid look ed fine, so there was no point in replacing it. Also, the car has ABS, so it would have been kind of a hassle. Car stops perfectly well now - no spo ngy pedal feel or other evidence of air in the brake system, etc. So I thi nk that will do.
The before-and-after difference in braking is dramatic. Driving over there , it felt like crap every time I had to stop. It stopped fine, just felt a wful. Kinda grind-y and uneven through the pedal.
On the way home? Braking was nice and solid, just as it should be. Smooth . Even. Not too much pedal travel required.
It turns out the battery was fine (like I said MB is fully equipped, to inc lude a battery tester). We added some distilled water, since the electroly te was a bit low.
This was where I learned about the "aspirin trick." Supposedly, you drop a n aspirin in each battery cell, and it cleans junk off the electrode(s?), r einvigorating an old battery. We skipped it both because we didn't have an y aspirin, and because the battery was working OK in the first place. I'm skeptical of Bubba-ing electrochemistry, but I'm far from the first to hear of this nugget of automotive wisdom.
Can't do that on my car, as the battery I have is sealed.
So in total I saved almost $700, even though I bought lunch for all involve d.
Next project: brakes on my own car. It's not had a brake job in around 9 y ears, so it's probably time.
We discussed the disposability of rotors. MB is of the opinion that you wa nt to swap the rotors every time you do a brake job, just because it's a we ar item. I can't disagree, given that they're relatively cheap - as long a s you're doing your own, not relying on a for-profit service.
We both had a good chuckle over the absurd markup on the parts the original mechanic wanted to use