awake
Titanium
- Joined
- Jan 24, 2006
- Location
- Angier, North Carolina
I just came in from doing a "quick" brake job on our minivan. Well, it WAS going quickly, until I discovered that the sound I was hearing was NOT the wear indicator, as I had hoped, but rather was one of the shoes that had worn down to the metal and was gouging lovely ridges in the rotor. Problem is, I discovered this at 10:00 pm, and my wife needs the van in the morning.
I thought I had read (here or elsewhere) that turning your own rotors is a waste of time, hard to get right, etc., etc., but I was desperate, and the rotor had way more than enough thickness, so I chucked it up on my 12-1/2" Cincinnati TrayTop. Had to turn the compound to 90º and do a little maneuvering to get to where the tool could sweep the face. No carbide tooling on hand, so I'm hoping HSS will do.
And ... it did. Very well. In fact, the job was so easy, I wondered what all the fuss was about. I kept a shop vac on it and that helped keep most of the mess contained, though I still wiped the ways down carefully afterwards. Took two passes at .010" DOC to clean it up -- probably way too cautious, but I didn't want to take off any more than I had to -- then a "finish" pass with slower feed and .005" DOC. It didn't come out with a mirror finish per se, but it cleaned up very nicely indeed. Remounted it on the van, put in the new pads, put the wheels back on. Tested it, and wow! it stops much smoother than it's been in a good while.
So, here's my question (gotta have a question, right?): Did I just get lucky, or is it just not that hard after all?
I thought I had read (here or elsewhere) that turning your own rotors is a waste of time, hard to get right, etc., etc., but I was desperate, and the rotor had way more than enough thickness, so I chucked it up on my 12-1/2" Cincinnati TrayTop. Had to turn the compound to 90º and do a little maneuvering to get to where the tool could sweep the face. No carbide tooling on hand, so I'm hoping HSS will do.
And ... it did. Very well. In fact, the job was so easy, I wondered what all the fuss was about. I kept a shop vac on it and that helped keep most of the mess contained, though I still wiped the ways down carefully afterwards. Took two passes at .010" DOC to clean it up -- probably way too cautious, but I didn't want to take off any more than I had to -- then a "finish" pass with slower feed and .005" DOC. It didn't come out with a mirror finish per se, but it cleaned up very nicely indeed. Remounted it on the van, put in the new pads, put the wheels back on. Tested it, and wow! it stops much smoother than it's been in a good while.
So, here's my question (gotta have a question, right?): Did I just get lucky, or is it just not that hard after all?