This is a random post in case someone ever googles looking for help. Last week the brakes on my 12-year-old Toyota FJ Cruiser started acting up. It was an electronic issue but basically when I turned on the car a bunch of dash lights lit up and a super annoying warning buzzer came on and wouldn’t go off. My brakes were also no longer working. So I called the Toyota roadside assist and took the car to the dealership.
I love the dealership but sometimes things don’t make much sense. In this case, I was quoted just shy over 1,000KD to fix the issue which was a failed “Brake Booster Assembly, W/Master Cylinder”. The part alone was 838KD and then the labor cost was 200 something. For a 12-year-old car that probably costs like 4,000KD in the second-hand market, probably less, it just didn’t make financial sense to pay that much.
I started trying to figure out how to get this problem sorted at a more reasonable price. Randomly, the day I got the quote from Toyota I had to go to Aleppo, the nuts and bolts store in Shuwaikh. As I pull up outside the Aleppo store I notice the shop next door had a large sign outside with the Toyota and Lexus logo and a large ABS brakes logo in the middle. So before heading into Aleppo I go up to one of the guys in that garage and show him a video of the errors I was getting on my dash, he quoted me 220KD to fix my problem and told me it was a 30 min job.
So I got a tow truck and had the car picked up from the dealership and dropped off at this garage. Turns out this garage does just one thing, which is to repair this one specific part on Toyotas and Lexuses. They have used ones in stock and swap out your non-working assembly with a new one and then give you a three-month warranty which they actually honor. I got mine swapped out but then felt the pedal feel was a bit off so came back to them a week later and they swapped it out again with another model and now it’s perfect. And the best part is it cost me just 1/5th the dealership price and they fixed it while I was waiting.
If you ever run into a similar brakes issue with your Toyota or Lexus and want to get it repaired outside the dealership, here is the location of this garage on Google Maps.
