RaceBiscuit

iTrader: (5)

What kind of advice were you looking for?

preludemushu

I have an 05 MR and my brakes have some serious grooves in the front rotors. My car only has 3000 miles on it, is this normal? also I keep hearing some clunking noises from the front end whenever I first drive it or its really cold. Can any one advise??

preludemushu

Im looking to see if the dealer should replace them or not. Im new to all this and I dont want to get screwed over. All the mechanics Ive had look at them tell me to take it back for warranty replacement. Has this happened to anyone else?

JeffR116

iTrader: (3)

If you're mechanically inclined enough to unbolt about 7 bolts, take off your rotors and bring them to Schuck's. They charge $10 per rotor to get them resurfaced. The dealer isnt quoting you for anything else, they're just simply raking you over the coals for all the money they can. That's how dealers make money.

Jeff

Gumpy

I have just replaced all 4 rotors with Rotora slotted rotors and ferodo DS-2500 pads. I bedded in the pads and rotors as specified. With not even 1000 miles on the car, I again have the steering wheel vibration under braking. So the stock rotors and pads are not the problem. It has to be a caliper or alignment issue with the rotor itself. I am pissed. Going back to mitsu dealership and hopefully will get the calipers replaced. Anyone else have any insight on this issue? Anyone have a defective caliper? Any help would be appreciated.

Gumpy.

RogueSTi

iTrader: (14)

Just for the record, I had the dreaded brake "shimmy" at about the 18k mile point. My father owns a Tool & Die shop so we mic'd the rotors out and found them to be...wait for it... WARPED. It was NOT build-up from the pads because the front and rear surfaces moved together.

I had a local shop resurface the brake rotors. Now, at 35k miles of agressive driving they're still perfect...no runout.

just for reference, I am using Ferodo DS2500 pads.

RaceBiscuit

iTrader: (5)

ok, well, replaced my front rotors with Brembo cross-drilled ones, and bought some Hawk HPS pads. I've only put a little over 2K on them, but so far so good!! *fingers crossed*

Satori

TimZ is right on with his recommendation of not turning the rotors when the pads are replaced. Minor grooves are perfectly normal and not detrimental to breaking effectiveness.

The sanding is easy and a good idea when ever you replace your pads as it helps the new pads and rotor surface conform to one another as well as cleaning off any old pad deposits -- or glaze as some call it. Both will happen naturally if you bed in your new pads but I feel that sanding is the proper way to get it done more quickly and uniformly. If you do sand you should apply light to moderate pressure with fine sandpaper or emery cloth either at opposing 90 degree angles to get a nice crosshatch pattern on the disk surface or use a swirling motion around the circumference of the disk surface as if you were polishing it. What you don't want to do is drag the sandpaper radially around the disk circumference.

Also, do not come to a complete stop when your brakes are hot as it will contribute to pedal pulse leading to having the rotors resurfaced as much as parking the car with visible moisture on the disk surface will. The first issue leads to uneven cooling of the disk and the second issue causes gobs of uneven pad transfer to the disk surface as well as uneven wear of the rotor. Not using a torque wrench on your lug nuts will lead to disk warp eventually due to the uneven tension on the disk as it heats and cools. So long as you don't use so much torque that is damages the wheels or so little that the lug nuts become loose and fall off, the amount of torque used isn't nearly as important as the fact that it's even between the lug nuts. Personally I like to use 80 to 85 ft-lbs but anywhere between 75 to 90 should be fine for most aluminum wheels. Just be sure to use the same setting all around. You can use more torque on steel rims, 120 ft-lbs wouldn't hurt them at all.

FWIW, I'm still on the original stock pads and I've had to have the rotors turned twice by 12k miles due to pedal pulse. Both times I tried to re-bed the pads to no avail. Well, to some avail really, it made the pulse less harsh but it was still noticeable and got bad again quickly. The second time I tried to sand a crosshatch pattern on the disk surface with 120 grit to clean them up but it didn't help a whole hell of a lot.

I don't know if it's the Brembo pads or the Brembo rotors that suck but at this point I'm considering pulling the plug on the both of them (or as we say in Chicago, “da-bode-a-vum”) and get Wilwood 2 piece slotted rotors and either Porterfield or Hawk pads. I'll keep the Brembo rotors around for use when the plows come out and start throwing salt all over the roads again. We wouldn't want that salt to corrode the aluminum hat to the cast iron rotor now would we.

As far as mechanics overcharging or performing unnessicary work, that's what they do. It's how they make money. That's what happens when you trust a stranger with your car. I personally never let anyone work on my car but myself. Not because it saves me a ton of money (which it does) but because I've had too many bad experiences with taking my cars in years ago. In one case I had to re-pull a transmission because they didn't use locktight on the fork attachment so it came loose -- in the middle of the highway I might add. In the process of removing the trans I found stripped and cross-threaded bolts as well as an oil soaked rag behind the radiator. It was the last time I let someone work on any of my cars. I see people use the best car care products they can afford, clean and wax their cars religiously, have the fluids changed more often than needed (just to be safe), then take the car in to have some stranger to perform mechanical work on them. To me that makes no sense at all. The best thing you can do for your car is learn to do as much as you can yourself. I'm probably over the top on this issue because if I reach the conclusion that my hubs are the cause of my re-occurring rotor runout, I'll buy new hubs before I'd take it in and have someone use an on the car lathe to turn my rotors because who knows what they might mess with while they are under there.

Gumpy

Satori,

Let me tell you, don't waste your money on the new rotors and pads, mine are shot with less than 1,000 miles. The tech rep is finally going to look at my hubs and wheel bearings in two weeks. Since you sound like you are mechanically inclined, do all of us a favor and check for bad wheel bearings as the service manual suggests. Remove your wheels and rotors. Then measure, using a dial guage, the axial runout of your wheel bearings inside the hub by pushing on the hub in and out. If the value exceeds 0.05 mm or 0.002 inches, the wheel bearings are bad. This would be a great help to many of us to eliminate causes of the brake problems, not to mention not getting worked over by mitsu. Any other help or imput would be appreciated.

Gumpy.

Satori

I'm a bit reluctant to do that just yet as proper checking of the hub requires pulling it from the vehicle with a slide hammer, which I haven't got at the moment. If the problem comes back in less than 8k miles I'll cross that bridge because it would constitute regularly reoccurring intervals.

Having the rotors turned the first time at about 6k miles was unexpected. The second time may have been my own fault because I'd been playing in the snow and I let it all freeze up on the suspension like a dumb-*** instead of taking the snow off with a powerwasher. So it's logical that as the snow and ice melted it could get on the rotors and cause me to have to resurface them again.

feldguy

iTrader: (4)

Gumpy, I get this when I drive in traffic a lot, or touch the brakes too often at speed. Especially with aggressive pads, its much more likley that high spots will develop from pad sediment. Usually taking a 3-4" round scotch pad in a drill chick, some brake cleaner and going over it lightly will get rid of that crap. Bedding in the pads properly according to the break in process is detrmental to the success of the brake job, so stoptech.com has that info. Check it out.

kericr

I hate asking this in a thread this long, but if I don't get a response I'll just start a new thread. My rear passenger rotor has a deep radial gouge in it from uneven pad wear. Right now, the brakes feel fine; no shimmy or akward stopping, but I'm sure that if I leave them alone, it will become a problem. Do I need to replace/resurface the rotors? I would think that just replacing the pads alone would cause a point in the pads where the current groove in the rotor is; and I want to make sure that this isn't just 'normal w/t' (the groove is deep in comparison to the rest of the rotor, I'd post a pic but I have no digital camera).

EvoVec

iTrader: (2)

i had my brake rotors resur becuase of some aweful pulsating. turned them down and put new pads on them and they feel like new....just a little more squeeking that before! not enough anti squeel apparently

Gumpy

Here is an update on my car. The tech rep was a total jerk and finally agreed to look at the car after I called MOA and filed a compliant with him. The complaint was filed as he was totally unprofessional and refused to let me even ride in the car with him. Anyway, they said that the new rotors can be installed five different ways (5 lugs). They tried each way until they found the least runout and lightly skimmed my brand new rotors (which they say were not warped) This lasted maybe 400 miles before problem re-surfaced. The service manager told me to call him with any problems that they will make it right. Well, he quit and the regional tech rep won't even look at my car. Am calling MOA again. I pretty much have absolved to finding an independent shop that specializes in suspension alignment and brakes and will have them find the problem. Then Mitsubishi is getting the bill. Hope you other guys are having better luck. My brakes have been doing this since 7,000 miles and no one can fix it right.

Gumpy.

bluevolution16g

I turned my stock rotors 3 times and still no fix. Finally bought Rotora drilled and slotted rotors and not even 500 miles the shimmy came back stronger than ever. After spending 350 for new rotors and still no fix im kinda upset. Whats the real problem here?? I dont see why uneven deposits would cause wheel shimmy.


kyle