I was driving home from work yesterday when (long story short) I ran over a tire. It sounded viscious when it hit the underside of my car, and there was a horrible vibrating noise when I accelerated. That seems to have fixed itself (not positive of that) but I went in to have it checked out ... here is a copy of my estimate:

http://www.fleetmack.com/image...e.jpg

 

this mechanic is looking for some gravy and he is trying to get it from you.

 

definately do no have him fix your car

 

they're telling me that the brake master ( i have no idea what that is ) is an absolute must fix as it's leaking fluid or something or another. they said the rest isn't absolutely necessary, but my exhaust and alignment is all jacked up and my tires will go bald very fast as a result of this ....

shed some light on the brake master for me?

 

The brake master cylinder?

 

i don't see how your brake master cylinder could have got damaged from your description. this is what it looks like and you should be able to find it on the top right of your engine bay, if you have your car do the brakes work properly

 

It was most likely leaking before this happened and the shop did an inspection of the whole car and found it.
If you hit the tire hard enough, all this sounds reasonable. Since you know what all is wrong why not go buy the parts and do the install yourself. None of it is hard to do.

 

Ya, thats a rip off. Master cylinder? Unless you busted your brake line and ran it dry for a long time.

 

that is reasonable. The MC was most likely bad and they are just telling him about it.

 

I don't see how running over a tire would warrant needing a new front crossmember, or both lower control arms and shocks. The prices are cheap actually for the parts, but they shouldn't be needed. I would take it to the alignment place and they can tell you how far out of alignment it is. But, if it drove fine before and now pulls, than you very well could have bent some parts. Was it a semi tire you hit going like 75mph?

 

sorry guys ... i'm just looking through my old posts today and trying to clean them up for any future people searching for solutions ...

the master brake cylinder was something he just saw while doing the inspection (and i did need it replaced, which I did)

I went ahead and got it re-aligned at an alignment shop for $80 ... the guy said he fixed about "70% of the problems" and told me it'd do, but if I were keeping the car for another 200K miles it's something I should fix (I'm only keeping it until 250K, up to 211K) so I'm not that concerned if I have to buy some new tires before I get to 250K.

Also, yes, this was a shredded semi tire that I hit, curled up like a elongated U. The midpipe of my exhaust was hitting my firewall (or whatever it's called) and they had to bang that out as I was getting some wicked vibration that was loud as hell.