I use WIX filter

 

There's a used car dealer down the road from my dealer that does oil changes for $12.95. A Goodyear down from my house that their everyday price is $17.95. You do what you have to do to get cars in the door. Lose your butt on oil changes and hopefully make it up with other service.

 

wow
as long as the service personal seem good, I would use them, considering 3-6$ for a filter, plus oil
but I don't mind doing it myself, then I know I did it right, but then again I have no one to blame when it brakes,

so far so good, 3 weeks ago, I replaced front disks, rotors, hardware and caliper pins on my 02 Liberty, also replaced the rear drums, shoes, hardware and parking brake hardware,(used Wagner thermo quiet ceramic pads and shoes, Wagner rotors, wearweaver drums,napa brake hardware)

never did any brake work before, only time I every even took drums off when I figured out how to replace a wheel stud, took a total of 5 hours for everything, front brakes 2hrs, rears 3hrs, did then on different weekends

was having a problem where the brakes worked fine, but intermittently I would loose the extra stopping power, such as you hit the brakes it slows you down fine, but if you push hard no increase in stooping power
I thought maybe the front rotors since they had been turned 2x (before I knew better) but did not improve after that, I found the problem to be the rear parking brake hardware, the star wheel adjuster had worn a grove in the lever so the adjuster could turn either way

wow, how did I get here from oil changes, oh well, sorry about that

 

Why is it I have a hard time believeing you've never done brake work before. You stike me as a do as much as you can kind of guy. Good job on finding the problem, you got skills.

 

I never thought I could, only ever done oil changes myself before, I am An xray tech by trade, the only thing my dad ever did was the oil, so that is all I did, now looking back I could have saved a lot of money on brake jobs, I grew up working on farms, but doing manual labor, such as stacking hay in barns, mending fences, trimming the trees on the fence rows

I suddenly figured out how bad I was with maintenance items around November 09, (probably because of my recurrence of cancer/surgery in Sept and Radiation in Nov)
and with my finances what they are right now between my expenses and my son's Autism therapy, it was the only way to get the stuff done

started doing the research on what and how to do things

I started on the jeep, first did the wheel stud, I was nervous doing that, since it was the first thing I had attempted, turned out great,
then since i had never done either differentials, transfer case, spark plugs, all were well over do also did the brake fluid and power steering fluid as well as antifreeze(drain refilled with distilled water, and repeated, went through gallons of distilled water)
I did take it to the dealer for the pinion seal leak and to do the transmission since it had a leak and was a few qts low,I thought the leak was from the rear seal of the pan, they did the fluid still had the leak, turned out to be the speed sensors leaking

then did the vans transmission fluid/filter, brake fluid, and power steering fluid(suck out refill, turn wheel just shy of lock to lock and repeat, didn't look bad, especially compared tot h p/s fluid in the jeep)

then finally did both brakes on the jeep, and got a few tools to show for it now, the best one is the breaker bar, I could not get the 21mm caliper bridge bolts off with my wrench so bought a breaker bar, no problem getting it then,
also picked up a few torque wrench's, one in the small inch Lbs for the transmission pan of the van and one 20-150ft lbs for wheel lugs and such, as well as a 15$ brake tool kit, to remove the springs of the drum brakes and open ended box wrenches to open the bleeder valves, as well as 5$ for a disk brake compressor tool to push the pistons back