What sort of rust do you have on them? Surface rust in bands from the outside and/or inside, or is it under the metallurgically modified layer, coming off in chunks? Either way it's not really a practical fix, but the surface bands have some chance to be taken care of, but step one is gonna be to find the discard thickness and see if there's anything to work with. If you have to cut it to discard, but not thinner, the useful service life is going to be aboout to the end of the driveway. How much can you save? And with either case, the pads are junk. They're not gonna go (well) against a new surface. ABS, traction control, and manual braking on wet/winter roads gets wierd with the friction balances not being what they once were.
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Is it possible to clean rotor discs
- Thread starter tim81
- Start date
What sort of rust do you have on them? Surface rust in bands from the outside and/or inside, or is it under the metallurgically modified layer, coming off in chunks? Either way it's not really a practical fix, but the surface bands have some chance to be taken care of, but step one is gonna be to find the discard thickness and see if there's anything to work with. If you have to cut it to discard, but not thinner, the useful service life is going to be aboout to the end of the driveway. How much can you save? And with either case, the pads are junk. They're not gonna go (well) against a new surface. ABS, traction control, and manual braking on wet/winter roads gets wierd with the friction balances not being what they once were.
I would like to make the surface flat and put new pads. If I can get another pair of pads from those rotors I would be glad.
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first question - did you go in with brake problems or was this pulled up as part of an "inspection"? If the latter, they're almost certainly trying to oversell you. I always chuckled at the long list of "essential" maintenance needed after a basic inspection, sometimes even of stuff that I had just replaced myself.
Easy check - are the disks below minimum thickness? That's usually cast into the disk or you can find the info online. Are the disks worn or excessively grooved? Are the pads below minimum thickness? Usually that's at the bottom of the slot or just above the screacher plate that tells you your pads have worn out.
If the answer is no to any of the above, you don't need to replace your brakes. If the pads are worn but the disks are fine, replace the pads. If the pads and disks are worn, go to rockauto, buy new rotors and pads and replace them. A few hours on your driveway, should cost you around $200 or thereabouts.
Easy check - are the disks below minimum thickness? That's usually cast into the disk or you can find the info online. Are the disks worn or excessively grooved? Are the pads below minimum thickness? Usually that's at the bottom of the slot or just above the screacher plate that tells you your pads have worn out.
If the answer is no to any of the above, you don't need to replace your brakes. If the pads are worn but the disks are fine, replace the pads. If the pads and disks are worn, go to rockauto, buy new rotors and pads and replace them. A few hours on your driveway, should cost you around $200 or thereabouts.
No I went for inspection no issue with the car brakes perfectly.
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I'm with @mattthemuppet2. If this brake overhaul was the result of an inspection I would get a second opinion. And definitely shop around for parts.
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Was this a state required inspection?
And...
In a brake lathe you will have inserts positioned opposite each other in X,Y, and Z planes just touching the rotor surface. The adjusting feature will be zeroed and ran to begin the trueing. Once you get a steady "tone", you can begin to take material off to get a consistently clean surface.
This should give you an idea.
And...
Nope. Didn't even watch it but nope. What you want is to set up in a brake lathe so the machining is done true to the spindle/axle bore. Otherwise your brake pedal will "pulse" and you wind up wasting money and time.
In a brake lathe you will have inserts positioned opposite each other in X,Y, and Z planes just touching the rotor surface. The adjusting feature will be zeroed and ran to begin the trueing. Once you get a steady "tone", you can begin to take material off to get a consistently clean surface.
This should give you an idea.
Better done on a lathe. Hard to keep parallel and have to fade out tool.
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Rotors are like $50 for a cheap pair and $200 for the premium slotted pairs. Pull the old ones off and put the new ones on with new pads is really easy. The first corner takes an hour and the remaining 3 wheels take 20 minutes each tops.
I haven't paid to have a brake job done on 35 years! It is one of the easiest operations to do on a car. If you can't handle a simple brake job with new rotors and new pads yourself we are going to have to kick you off of this site!
I can guarantee that for $850 you get the $50/pair ($100/car) rotors and those are retail prices. They probably pay $60 for the 4 rotors.
All you need for fancy tools is a big C clamp to push the brake piston into the caliper. For rotors and pads there is no bleeding the brakes. The brake lines remain sealed. The only time you need to bleed disc brakes is if you swap the brake caliper too.
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