Brake discs

Pad dust is a problem on many new vehicles. My Range Rover is a pig as was the X5 and ML. Strangely the current pads on the Toyota are fairly dust free.

Huw

What happened to 'acceleration sense' and using engine braking (not severe) to keep the speed at a sensible level without braking?

Anyway, with all these hybrids coming along there are proposals to have 'deceleration lights' not 'brake lights' so regenerative braking etc. still show a light. Will solve engine braking too - if you are slowing more than a smallish amount, the lights come on.

You may well ask. It appears to be a mystery to some here. Their ignorance is tough on their wallets for sure.

Huw

The message from "Dave Baker" contains these words:

To the car behind, of course! Brake lights are like any other signals, and should be used when appropriate to "help and inform other road users".

Not in my vehicles it's not. My VW Transporter still has lots of original pad left at 140,000 miles.

John

Don't the latest BMWs do this already?

Cos your lifes easier if the f****it behind doesn't run into you.

The message from "PC Paul" contains these words:

It's still taught. As someone said up there ^ somewhere, there's a middle way between driving up to something and braking hard, and using engine braking - it's called "sensible".

The message from Duncanwood contains these words:

Quite. One of the things I used to teach learners was that in the end, it doesn't matter how much it was your right of way if you have to spend an hour waiting for a towtruck.

But try telling that to the bus drivers round here...

The message from "Carl Bowman" contains these words:

Last time I used a bus I had sharp words with the driver about the quality of the ride for the passengers, one of whom had fallen over when he took a corner too fast. He didn't seem bothered. Next time I'll have a chat with the bus company.

Last time I used a bus, the fare was 6d! (Yes, really).

Chris

Guy King Jan 13, 12:48 pm show options

Newsgroups: uk.rec.cars.maintenance From: Guy King - Find messages by this author Date: Fri, 13 Jan 2006 12:48:08 GMT Local: Fri, Jan 13 2006 12:48 pm Subject: Re: Brake discs Reply | Reply to Author | Forward | Print | Individual Message | Show original | Report Abuse

The message from "Carl Bowman" contains these words:

Last time I used a bus I had sharp words with the driver about the quality of the ride for the passengers, one of whom had fallen over when he took a corner too fast. He didn't seem bothered. Next time I'll have

a chat with the bus company.

A BMW with some sort of indicator of the driver's intentions? What's the world coming to?

The message from "Carl Bowman" contains these words:

It'd have to be psychic. Even the drivers don't usually know what they're going to do.

They start to squeak as the disc distorts due to thiness and gets high/ low spots on it. Replace them or the whole break assembly will break up and can lock up your wheels.

If the discs are excessively worn, they will fail.

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember "Tim S Kemp" saying something like:

I beg to differ, old fruit. Sure, there's a school of thought that hold with not using engine braking to prolong the life of the gearbox, but that's largely bollocks, imo.

They will fail only if there is some visible defect such as a major crack, piece missing, or the wear is so extreme that on ventilated disks the ventilation holes are showing through. That won't happen until the total wear is 6mm or more. Checking the disk thickness is not part of the MOT. Shortly after buying it with 33k miles on the clock I skimmed the disks on my Focus on my lathe when I fitted new pads. They were worn by 2mm which is actually the recommended wear limit but after skimming they look brand new as far as any MOT tester is concerned (including the one who tested it sometime later) and will continue to give perfectly good service for another

The recommended wear limit is more about selling you another set of disks than any actual performance measure of the disks themselves. There is a huge safety margin built in before any degradation of braking performance takes place.

-- Dave Baker