Vehicle Brake Maintenance

Vehicle maintenance is an important part of owning a vehicle. People are busy and forget to have there vehicle looked at before they have issues and end up with costly repairs. Quite often we see parts wear out and because they were not noticed earlier, and showed no signs of failing, destroyed other parts that could have been saved turning into dangerous situations for the driver and occupants in the vehicle.

One example is a vehicle that came in that had an odd noise, slight grinding sound, when the brake pedal was pushed. What had happened, caused the brakes to act inefficiently causing the braking distance to extend past what the driver was expecting. Without getting to technical i will try and explain.

There is one brake per wheel. Each brake has two brake pads mounted to a caliper that when applied squeeze on a medal disk known as a brake rotor that rotates with the wheel. These pads have fiber surfaces that wear slightly when applied slowing the rotor to stop that wheel thus slowing down the car. When the pads wear to a certain point they must be replaced. What happened in this case was the pad was worn past the minimum limit and the medal surface where the pad mounts to the brake pad was trying to stop the medal rotor wearing the rotor out. this brake pad could have come out of its mounted position and caused the brakes to completely fail and not stop the vehicle. If you have ever pushed on you brake pedal and it went to the floor with the car not reacting, you no it;s a scary feeling.

This could have avoided costly repairs if the would have been checked and serviced. Where the cost of changing the pads when needed would have been relatively inexpensive,

The driver now had to pay for a rotor that was worth big money. Not only did it cost way more than expected but could have been worse by being involved in an accident with another vehicle or a person. Final words.....get your brakes checked regularly...What's stopping you?