Brake work

[WingAdmin]

Not even remotely motorcycle related, but I thought might be of interest.

My daughter brought her car over yesterday to let me have a look at it. She said the brakes were "grinding." I couldn't believe what I found when I pulled the wheels off...

Where's the brake pad?

Caliper taking the place of the brake pad

The inner pad had seized in place, causing the caliper to wear through the pad lining, the pad itself, and when the pad was finally gone, it wore through the caliper!

Ten hours of work, endless seized bolts, four new brake rotors, new pads all around, and one new brake caliper, and her car is now safe and driveable again.

[Mountain rider]

Worked for a few years turning wrenches and doing brakes, and I can't tell you how many I've seen like that. Glad you got it taken care of before things really went South.

[Viking]

Up here, anything that is more than four years old looks like that. My truck is a 2004 and is on its fifth set of rotors, third set of calipers and probably tenth set of pads. We can Krown undercoat to protect the metal of the vehicle, but nothing saves brakes from salt and calcium. If I drove the truck more, I probably would have gotten more life from the brakes, but that is the way it is. I am, however, still on the OEM exhaust system front to back.

[Aussie81Interstate]

Scott,

I do believe it is time you gave your daughter a crash course in motor vehicle maintenance.

Plus get her to assist (probably too late for that) to rebuild the brakes with you - and maybe suggest that she pays for your labour - might get her attention

My wife had a similar issue years ago - "the temperature gauge went all the way up - so I drove home 20 miles as fast as I could" - resulting in one cooked and warped head - repair cost was not cheap.

[WingAdmin]

Scott,

I do believe it is time you gave your daughter a crash course in motor vehicle maintenance.

Plus get her to assist (probably too late for that) to rebuild the brakes with you - and maybe suggest that she pays for your labour - might get her attention

My wife had a similar issue years ago - "the temperature gauge went all the way up - so I drove home 20 miles as fast as I could" - resulting in one cooked and warped head - repair cost was not cheap.

Oh, she was there helping. She did the oil change, too.

[Sadanorakman]

@Wingadmin, How did your daughter not realise that the brakes were severely degraded long before the pad was completely eaten away?

Also, do you guys not have a mandatory annual road safety inspection for your vehicles like we do here in the UK?

I find that many car brake pads these days have an audible low pad wear indicator so they start to squawk when they get down to around 3mm or 1/8", and this is very hard to ignore.

I guess I'm just totally shocked; not by the extent of the damage, but at what the in-effectiveness of the braking system must have been like before you did this work. Did your daughter throw an anchor out of the window each time she wanted to stop?

Incidentally folks, modern car brakes are not like bike brakes. Car rotors (Disks) are pretty soft, and therefore quite sacrificial in the braking process, unlike the rotors on your Gold wings which are pretty hard. I find over the last ten years and several cars, that I need to replace my car rotors after every two or three sets of brake pads, as the wear ridge becomes quite substantial, and the disks quickly fall below the manufacturers minimum thickness specification.

regards

[Big Blue UK]

Seen plenty with the lining worn away, but bloody hell .

[WingAdmin]

@Wingadmin, How did your daughter not realise that the brakes were severely degraded long before the pad was completely eaten away?

Also, do you guys not have a mandatory annual road safety inspection for your vehicles like we do here in the UK?

I find that many car brake pads these days have an audible low pad wear indicator so they start to squawk when they get down to around 3mm or 1/8", and this is very hard to ignore.

I guess I'm just totally shocked; not by the extent of the damage, but at what the in-effectiveness of the braking system must have been like before you did this work. Did your daughter throw an anchor out of the window each time she wanted to stop?

Incidentally folks, modern car brakes are not like bike brakes. Car rotors (Disks) are pretty soft, and therefore quite sacrificial in the braking process, unlike the rotors on your Gold wings which are pretty hard. I find over the last ten years and several cars, that I need to replace my car rotors after every two or three sets of brake pads, as the wear ridge becomes quite substantial, and the disks quickly fall below the manufacturers minimum thickness specification.

regards

She knew that the brakes weren't working well, but also knew she didn't have the money at the time to fix them, so she just parked the car and relied on her boyfriend for transportation for a bit.

Fortunately, the rear brakes were the ones worst affected, the fronts were still providing some stopping ability.

There are no safety inspections here in Ohio. Some states have them, Ohio does not. You see amazing rolling heaps of junk on the road as a result.

You're right about car rotors vs bike rotors. I've had several people ask about turning their bike rotors - it's extremely difficult to do, the lathes capable of turning hardened bike rotors are specialized, the lathe at your local auto shop won't touch it. Generally, it's a bad idea to turn bike rotors - when they are worn enough to require turning, they're usually beyond spec, and need to be replaced.

[brettchallenger]

I've got a daughter like yours. Gorgeous looking, thin as a rake, immaculate nails. "faecal" car. Had to use the Latin there, Anglo-Saxon is censored.