Brakes... blimey.

Jan 23, 2005 18 Replies

My wife complained that her car (citroen ZX) made a 'pop' sound when she braked and then sounded a bit like the pads were grinding on the nearside.



Had a look at it this afternoon... the disk had broken free from the hub.



Looks like it just rusted out at the join.



Must admit I'm a little shocked, it's done about 100k and is in pretty good shape. It's the turbo-diesel intercooler estate so it's got the vented front disks.



Is this something these cars suffer from? It's the first time I've seen it in 20 years of pissing about with cars.



Of course, I left it until saturday afternoon to look at and need it fixed for sunday afternoon so had no choice but to try halfords, second superstore I called had them in stock, 30 quid each. A little expensive (since I put brembo disks on my BMW 520 all round for about 100 quid) but even so I was still impressed that they were in stock.


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Tenner each.

Heh. Well I needed to get it done so whilst I'm forty quid to the bad I'm not going to lose any sleep over it.

Anyway, they were eleven quid each plus five for delivery plus vat so only half the price...

An occasional service would have shown a problem long before it became lethal. 20 years ago disks lasted far longer. Nowadays 30000 miles is the likely life on an average car.

mrcheerful

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Pah, hardly worth worrying about!

It has an occasional service, passed an MOT recently and had new brakepads fitted about 2,000 miles ago.

Given the place the rust occured it wouldn't be easy to see; even with the wheel off it wasn't obvious until I touched it (to move the caliper into view by twisting the disk)and the disk moved a little.

And re 30,000 miles being likely life- not my experience at all.

Have the discs ever been changed? Modern asbestos free pads tend to wear out discs much faster. On my BMW, they only last for two pad sets - if that. On the BMW, the minimum thickness is stamped on the disc hub.

I have some dark and distant memory..... I've also noticed a rise in arson attacks since he was last seen on Usenet ;-)

I doubt the disks have ever been changed, the disks themselves look pretty ok, it's just a shame one of them isn't attached to the hub part.

Looks like the metal there's pretty thin on the new ones- designed to disintegrate no doubt...

Vented discs have to be thin for the cooling effect to work.

The bit that joins the disk to the hub had a 'v groove' machined out of it at the point it had rusted through, from the inside. The other side was starting to show the same damage.

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The extra head really suits you.

Had it happen on a old Mercedes I had, but used infrequently. Disk was old but looked to be in reasonable shape, as in not too thin. Made a low speed emergency brake one day and *crack*, rattle, rattle...

On my BMW my pads lasted over 100,000 miles so a set of discs every

200,000 isn't so bad :-)

Do you trailer it everywhere? ;-)

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