Accord brake questions

I have an 03 Accord Coupe. It's time for brake pads. The rotors have a little
run out. Is it better to turn the rotors or replace them? If replacement is
best, is there a good source with discount prices? Maybe some take off OEM
rotors from tuner cars?

 

Never turn Honda rotors. If they are really bad, replace them.
Usually they don't need turning or replacing when greedy dealers claim
they do. Are you experiencing pedal pulsation? Unreliable braking?

 

We turn Honda rotors all the time, never had problems with them, (now
Taurus, that's another story) As long as you follow the specs to the
machine to limits, your OK. Granted if you don't have pulsation, you can
pass on that part; but if I have time I prefer to do a light cut to prevent
brake noise and allow the pads to seat better.

 

And bring the customer back for another brake job sooner.

 

How so?
we don't do brake jobs until something is wrong.
Leaks, pulsation, uneven wear or worn out. Your suggesting he spend money to
replace a part that the federal government says is still good. I say (from
much experience) that there is still life left in the rotors. An average
rotor can wear out 3 sets of pads before needing to be replaced even with
turning. Volvos and Audis and some newer cars use such a soft metal that by
the time you wear out one set of pads the rotors are at or past minimum
specs.
If there is no pulsation, turning is an option, however one light cut on the
rotor can prevent brakes from squealing. Sometimes I use a scuff pad and
remove the glaze with it. Some Honda's have pressed on rotors and we charge
extra if we need to take them off. When you do this for a living we don't
want the customer to come back a week later for a brake noise, for then I
have to rework the brakes and now turn them and get no money for it. I don't
get paid by the hour, I get paid by each job, so there is no benefit in
doing it twice.
A local tire shop will not do your brakes unless you put new calipers on it.
I don't believe in doing what isn't necessary, but I believe in doing the
job right the first time.


--
Stephen W. Hansen
ASE Certified Auto Technician

 

Every thou you take off those rotors is thousands of miles of rotor
wear the customer doesn't benefit from.

Never replace worn out pads for that reason alone?

No I'm suggesting that most of the time the rotor doesn't need
turning, and the benefits of a little less noise and faster seating of
the new pads isn't worth the loss of milage.

And probably 5 without turning.

I'd rather have the brakes squeal a bit for a few hundred miles and
not need another brake job so soon. I view all this rotor turning
business as a cash cow and little more.

Yeah, cause you'd have to fix that for free. Whereas if he's back in
six months for new rotors, that's profitable!

 

Something you're missing in this pissing contest is the fact of the
litigant society that we live in. Better to be safe and do the "light
cut" and have a smooth seating process than have an unhappy customer
complaining of noise.

But, I do agree that many times, resurfacing is not needed and is a
decision that should be left to a well informed customer (which is a
rarity). I also prefer to overhaul engines without re-honing cylinder
wall for exactly the same reason of "stolen" miles of wear down the road...

 

Well yes, I've gotta concede that point. An analogy I remember from my
own experience in TV repair is my boss insisting I set the horizontal
and vertical sweep of cusomers sets way wider than they should have
been according to the book. "If they see a tiny little bit of black at
the edges after the vertical or horizontal drivers age a bit" he would
tell me, "they'll be back screaming because they'll think they're
missing something!" So they ended up missing about 15 to 20% of the
picture out past the edges of the screen on all sides instead!

Are the days of the old ridge-reamer long gone?

 

Nope... I always remove the ridge...

 

It's the same in the auto industry. The brakes can be metal to metal when it
comes in and one squeak will have the customer back within a week. YOU may
not mind a squeak, but the average consumer will come flying back for the
slightest noise. I only get about 3/4 an hour pay for brakes. If I don't
cover my butt and do everything possible to ensure they don't come back,
then my 8 dollars take-home for the brakes now becomes 4 dollars along with
the lost time that I'm not producing another completed job.
I was once concerned about turning rotors until I measured how much came off
during each cut, it wasn't as drastic as I thought. My job is to make them
as perfect as possible, as quick as possible. It is also amazing how rotors
can wear even though there is no pulsation. Sometimes putting new pads on a
car with no pulsation will result in a car with pulsation. Some cars can
take a bit of runout and provide no pulsation, others may have just a wee
bit or runout and give nice pulsation.

 

How do you ensure the rings are going to seat? I never thought about the
pro's and cons of cylinder wear, I just want to be sure the car don't smoke
when I'm done. As hard as a Honda block is, I don't think I would be too
concerned about wearing out a cylinder wall. Just put new rings in the
daughters 86, no ridge with 200K on it; amazing. The only evidence of wear
was a light groove at the top where the top ring stopped the upward travel
and started down.

 

Just scuffing up the rotors with fine emery paper will allow the pads to
seat better, i.e., break the glaze from the old pads. No machining
necessary.

 

Runout doesn't cause pulsation. It's variations in rotor thickness
that do that. See: http://www.babcox.com/editorial/bf/bf100326.htm

Another effect I have noticed on my own car (96 Accura GSR) is that
there can be a certain degree of juddering when the brakes are hot.
I drive steep mountain roads in western Canada, the kind that have 9%
downhill runs for several miles and have 3 or 4 emergency runoff lanes
for trucks. I have heard several explanations for this effect, which
feels like pulsation but isn't. It always goes away when the brakes
cool off. Someday I may get around to trying one of the more expensive
aftermarket rotors to see if they act the same way.

 

The rings will seat but it takes longer which is not a problem...

JT

-

 

Yea, I get that runout phrase confused all the time, I should call it what I
know it as, warpage.
As far as the Juddering, the rotors that are designed for better heat
dissipation may solve it, bit they are expensive. What pads have you tried?
Are the pads glued or lubed to the caliper?
Steve

 

I only use OEM pads.

I am always careful to lube the steel shims and pad ears.

The juddering is not accompanied by pedal pulsation, and I suspect is
due to different places on the rotor having different co-efficients of
friction when hot. Sometimes rotors are cast from recycled metals that
may not be homogenous, and I've heard that as an explanation.

If I were racing I would be concerned, but I've not experienced any
sign of fade when this juddering is going on.

 

I'm not a big fan of shims, Seen to many problems cured by getting rid of
them.
Mostly I glue the pads down to the calipers, I use to lube them. I have no
real opinion if one is better than the other. I'm not quite sure I buy the
rotor theory, unless there a cheap brand. I would try to get the pads to
stick to the calipers better. If there allowed to move, even with lube, it
could cause what your describing under the right circumstance.

Steve