Brake Repair & Brake Shoe, Pad, Rotor Replacement

For our basic brake jobs, we do the following: We remove the wheels, the calipers and then the rotors. We inspect the caliper mountings, hardware and caliper operation. We then clean and lubricate the caliper slides to make sure that both your brake calipers will slide at the same rate. This is important because if one slides slower that the other, your vehicle will pull to one side when you apply the brakes. We then inspect the hydraulic system looking for cracked brake hoses or leaking lines that could fail and cause you to loose brake operation. We then machine the rotors after checking them for thickness. When we check the rotors, we look at two measurements. One is the machine-to specification. This lets us know how much material we can safely remove from the rotor and still have it be safe. The other is the discard specification. If your rotor is thinner than the discard spec. it will need to be replaced. This is important because your brakes generate a lot of heat in order to stop your car. This heat comes from your brake pads squeezing your rotors. As your rotors heat up you need to apply more pressure to make your brakes work. If your rotors are too thin when they heat up they are more susceptible to warping. If your rotors are warped when your hit your brakes, your steering wheel will shake and your brakes will not work as well as intended.

If your vehicle is equipped with drum style brakes, we replace the pads and service the drum system. This system consists of a wheel cylinder, brake springs, slides, backing plate, and pressure adjusters. The wheel cylinder does the same job as the caliper piston in that this is where the pressure to apply the brakes is transferred from the hydraulic lines to a mechanical piston. Part of what we do while servicing your brakes is to clean all the parts and apply a coating of grease to reduce friction and wear. We also recommend replacing the brake hardware (springs) when you do a brake job because if the pads have worn out, that means that those springs have expanded and contracted thousands of times. After all this expansion and contraction, just like any metal, the springs weaken and may not fully disengage your brakes. This causes premature brake pad wear.