# (Car) brake thing...? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [August 13, 2010, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/car-brake-thing/550117 "2010-08-13T03:11:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![In\_Winnipeg](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/a8b319/32.png) [@In\_Winnipeg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/In_Winnipeg)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2010, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/car-brake-thing/550117/21 "2010-08-13T22:43:32Z")
> [@Leaffan](#): > > It’s a heck of a lot better than it was 20, 30 years ago. Nowadays you can drive a car for 100,000 miles before having to do anything major. Most cars from the previous generation wouldn’t even last 100,000 miles. Do you really think so? I know that most cars built in the 70s were shit, with mechanical problems such as automatic chokes that didn’t work worth shit in cold climes and major rusting problems, but in the 80s and onward they got better with ever increasing numbers of disposable parts. And so here we are today, with tons of parts you can’t even work on – you just replace them – but they don’t come cheap at all. At least before the 80s, the average guy with a toolkit of any consequence could change his own sparkplugs and do a tune up, and if he was really good, he could even fix his own brakes and work on his own suspension – all you needed was the right tools and a manual. Anything from the 60s on back was much easier to work on. Granted, you didn’t have things like EFI or ABS, but no one else had them either. ---
**Author:** ![Leaffan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leaffan/32/299_2.png) [@Leaffan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaffan)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2010, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/car-brake-thing/550117/22 "2010-08-13T23:59:21Z")
> [@crazyjoe](#): > > > [@Leaffan](#): > > > > It’s a heck of a lot better than it was 20, 30 years ago. Nowadays you can drive a car for 100,000 miles before having to do anything major. Most cars from the previous generation wouldn’t even last 100,000 miles. > > Please remove your head from your buttocks. 20 years ago was 1990. I had several cars of that era all last over 100,000 miles with basic maintenance, and it was not uncommon. One I even turned over 200K. Did they have more problems at 100K than cars do now, sure, but getting to 100K was not an issue for most cars built in 1990, or even 5 years before it. Ha. You’re right. 20 years ago was 1990. I should have thought that response through a bit. OK, 30, 40 years ago… I remember my brother carrying a camera with him in the early 80s. His 1976(?) Monte Carlo was going to crank over 100,000 miles and he wanted to take a picture of the momentous occasion. ---
**Author:** ![Rick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/9f8e36/32.png) [@Rick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2010, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/car-brake-thing/550117/23 "2010-08-14T00:18:03Z")
I am going to disagree with the masses here. It does not sound like warped rotors. Warped front rotors cause a back and forth movement in the steering wheel, most noticable at higher speeds. This is not what is being described in the OP. Warped rear rotors, or out of round rear brake drums cause a pulsation in the brake pedal. Again more noticable at higher speeds. Again not in the description of the symptoms in the OP. I can think of a couple of things that might give the symptoms described. Worn tires might give such a feeling particulary if the road is groved. A bad front wheel drive axle can give such a feeling, often accompanied with clicking and other strange noises. Lastly sometimes ABS can get funny wheel speed signals causing the system to trigger at low speeds. ---
**Author:** ![ironbender](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/ba8739/32.png) [@ironbender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ironbender)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2010, 4:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/car-brake-thing/550117/24 "2010-08-14T04:01:51Z")
Agree with the above, but it sounds like a classic case of tramlining to me, OP how wide are your tires? My car has 275/40/17’s and does this all the time, even when I can’t see grooves in the road. The wider the tire, the worse it will be. Tread design and wear will also cause this. ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2010, 5:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/car-brake-thing/550117/25 "2010-08-14T05:30:34Z")
> [@Rick](#): > > I am going to disagree with the masses here. It does not sound like warped rotors. > Warped front rotors cause a back and forth movement in the steering wheel, most noticable at higher speeds. This is not what is being described in the OP. > Warped rear rotors, or out of round rear brake drums cause a pulsation in the brake pedal. Again more noticable at higher speeds. Again not in the description of the symptoms in the OP. > > I can think of a couple of things that might give the symptoms described. > Worn tires might give such a feeling particulary if the road is groved. > A bad front wheel drive axle can give such a feeling, often accompanied with clicking and other strange noises. > Lastly sometimes ABS can get funny wheel speed signals causing the system to trigger at low speeds. Trying to think of a user test. Wouldn’t applying the brakes harder to see if the “shimmy” goes away indicate rotor problems? It’s not uncommon for a caliper to hang up on one side if the sliding mechanism is dry. this would be exacerbated with a warped rotor. I associate bad axle joints with noise. ---
**Author:** ![flickster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/7bcc69/32.png) [@flickster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/flickster)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2010, 12:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/car-brake-thing/550117/26 "2010-08-14T12:07:25Z")
> [@Rick](#): > > I am going to disagree with the masses here. It does not sound like warped rotors. > Warped front rotors cause a back and forth movement in the steering wheel, most noticable at higher speeds. This is not what is being described in the OP. > Warped rear rotors, or out of round rear brake drums cause a pulsation in the brake pedal. Again more noticable at higher speeds. Again not in the description of the symptoms in the OP. > > I can think of a couple of things that might give the symptoms described. > Worn tires might give such a feeling particulary if the road is groved. > A bad front wheel drive axle can give such a feeling, often accompanied with clicking and other strange noises. > Lastly sometimes ABS can get funny wheel speed signals causing the system to trigger at low speeds. Not been my case at all - warped rotors most definitely do transmit a shimmy into the steering wheel at slow speeds, while braking. At high speeds you’re more likely to experience a noise similar to an 18 wheeler stopping, but very little “shimmy” ---
**Author:** ![Rick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/9f8e36/32.png) [@Rick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2010, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/car-brake-thing/550117/27 "2010-08-14T17:39:21Z")
> [@Magiver](#): > > > [@Rick](#): > > > > I am going to disagree with the masses here. It does not sound like warped rotors. > > Warped front rotors cause a back and forth movement in the steering wheel, most noticable at higher speeds. This is not what is being described in the OP. > > Warped rear rotors, or out of round rear brake drums cause a pulsation in the brake pedal. Again more noticable at higher speeds. Again not in the description of the symptoms in the OP. > > > > I can think of a couple of things that might give the symptoms described. > > Worn tires might give such a feeling particulary if the road is groved. > > A bad front wheel drive axle can give such a feeling, often accompanied with clicking and other strange noises. > > Lastly sometimes ABS can get funny wheel speed signals causing the system to trigger at low speeds. > > Trying to think of a user test. Wouldn’t applying the brakes harder to see if the “shimmy” goes away indicate rotor problems? It’s not uncommon for a caliper to hang up on one side if the sliding mechanism is dry. this would be exacerbated with a warped rotor. I associate bad axle joints with noise. while noise is the usual symptom, I had a set of axles just yesterday that make the car feel like the wheels were falling off. Hitting the brakes harder will not make a warped rotor shimmy go away. ---
**Author:** ![Leaper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/4bbf92/32.png) [@Leaper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaper)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2010, 4:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/car-brake-thing/550117/28 "2010-08-15T04:59:25Z")
FYI, I took it in. The tech took me out driving a short distance with it to try it out. The first time he tried the brakes, he said “rotors.” When it came down to it, he found out I still had 40% of my brake pads left, and doing the two parts of the work separately would cost me more. So he suggested, since it wouldn’t harm anything else, that I could wait on that repair 'til I could justify having the brake pads replaced at the same time, to save money. So that, so far, is what I’m going to do. Not, of course, that he’s necessarily right, so I’d love to hear other thoughts in the meantime. Still, I just wanted to let you know I have a course of action for the time being. 🙂 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/car-brake-thing/550117.md?page=1)