I buy Brembo and have them turned before they’re ever installed and once more before trashing them.
I have had them hot turned and then cryrogenically frozen for my A6.
I have them turned for exactly the reason that I can get much better precision than comes from the factory and I’m not talking BoBo brand from China.
As to the OP your wife got ripped off. In the future she needs to separate herself from the situation. She can tell them if it’s not safe she’ll have to walk home and her incredibly pissed off husband will be in to deal with it or reschedule. They will in all likelyhood send her home with an oil change.
This isn’t just directed at women. It also applies to men. Just remove yourself from the scene any way you can and give yourself some time to think and gather evidence as to what needs to be done and how much it should cost.
Yesterday morning I sent the following email to Tire Kingdom’s president and VP. (It took a while, but I finally figured out what their email addresses were.) When I got home from work today there were two messages on the answering machine – one from their corporate headquarters and one from the local store. I’ll call them both tomorrow. I am also taking the rotors to a buddy of mine who’s an instructor at a Sinclair College’s Automotive Technology Department.
The reason I’m doing this, BTW, is not for the money.
<minor hijack> What’s the definition of the word “turn” when speaking of “turning a rotor”? To change the position, or is it something like to sand it?</minor hijack>
:rolleyes::dubious:
A car maker will repair or replace items under warranty based on what is cheaper and is consistent with a quality repair.
So when companies like Mercedes, BMW and Volvo don’t turn rotors under warranty but rather go to the extra expense of replacing rotors there has to be a reason. I gave that reason above. I was actually part of a task force that looked into possibly turning rotors using on car brake lathes.
Guess what? We found after an in the field trial that turning rotors was inferior to replace when it came to vibration and longevity.
The factory limit for runout is measured in thousandths of a millimeter. Way tighter tolerance than commercial brake lathe I am aware of.
Seriously dude, if you are having to turn rotors before installation, you have a supplier that is not storing them properly. Find a new supplier.
CM if it is any help, you add my ASE master automotive technician status, a former instructor for a car maker and the fact that I am a service manager for a large auto dealership to the pile on with them.
Whenever my wife does car repair stuff she nearly always gets jammed with crap like this. She can take a car in for an oil change and come out $200 poorer… “well, the guy said my serpentine belt was frazoozled, and that my discombobulator was loose.”
Don’t know about the OP’s experience, but in my experience, many car repair guys simply prey on females. The time when she called me up saying “But the car guy said he wouldn’t feel safe picking up his kid with the car” was pretty much the last straw. A strongly worded letter from my lawyer pretty much fixed that situation… and me taking the car(s) in for repairs put a stop to future problems of this sort.
Usual disclaimer: not all car guys are like this, blah blah blah. But enough are.
John your wife’s and Crafter_Man’s wife’s experience shows why it is important to have a regular quality shop that you take your car to. I agree with you that there are predatory shops out there. It’s not just women either. I have seen shops try to take advantage of any warm blooded two legged animal that comes in the door*. There are too many of these shops unfortunately. But there are lots of quality honest shops also.
I can guarantee you that if any of my people tried to act in a predatory manner toward one of my customers that would be their very last day in my employ. I can also guarantee that Gary T has never hosed a customer either.
Gary T wrote a wonderful thread several years ago about how to find a quality shop. Maybe if we ask nice he will link to it.
My suggestion as someone who has spent more than 1/2 his life dinking with cars for a living, the single best thing you can do for your wallet and well being as a car owner is to find a quality shop and patronize them. Patronize them for every single thing your car needs. Maybe their oil change might cost $10 more than the Iffy Lube down the street, but they won’t damage your car, or forget to put oil back in the engine, or try to sell you shit you don’t need.
Every time someone goes to a scumbag shop it helps to keep them in business. If everyone stopped going to these assholes they would go out of business.
*Hell I had a used car lot and a shop that was out of town try to take advantage of me today. Scumbags. Didn’t work BTW.
That makes so much more sense, but until reading this thread I never even thought of a lathe. All I could think of was “Well, maybe they’re stationary, and you’re rotating it so that it’s not always wearing in the same spot.”
(Bolding mine) Pads are almost* always replaced in sets because A: they cannot be purchased individually - they’re only sold in sets (e.g. all four for the front brakes) and B: replacing only some of them could result in imbalanced braking (i.e. a pull from one side gripping better than the other). I would hope that in their response they will explain this, as it is legitimate justification to replace all four pads even if only one is faulty.
*The exception being replacing one brake caliper with a “loaded” caliper, i.e. a caliper that comes with two new pads. While this gets around point A, it does not address point B. It’s usually wise to replace calipers in pairs to maintain proper brake balance, but there are a few situations where it might not be necessary.
