I decided to do my front brakes today, because a few days ago they started making noise.
For one, I had no idea the rotors (well at least the one I’m looking at) were in such bad shape. Also, one of the caliper pins is nuclearly bonded to the mounting bracket and I cannot budge it. I gave up at dark. I’m going to have to take the bracket into someone (Canadian Tire) tomorrow and ask them to free the bugger.
So, back to the rotors; it was getting dark and I figured the rotor should just slide off the hub. Is this not the case? Do I need to remove the cotter pin and centre hub nut? It was too dark to tell.
Dunno about Hyundai, but the last couple cars of mine I’ve swapped rotors on have been similar. The ‘hat’, the central part of the rotor that has the holes that the lugs slide through has had a small screw holding the whole rotor assembly in place. Once that screw is out, sometimes the rotor assembly needs some light persuasion with a rubber mallet as it can get glued in place with grime and corrosion.
Look here about 10 minutes in. Looks like there’s two screws. Soak those with Kroil or PB Blaster before you even try to get those off. They can be a real bastard.
If this is the original set of rotors, then, more than likely they are two set screws holding it on to the wheel hub. This is for the assembly line so they don’t fall off.
I have always had to drill them out and I have never replaced them.
Well, the good news is that I took the mounting bracket into the shop (Canadian Tire) where I bought my pads and rotors and they freed it up for me with a heating torch in about 5 minutes. No charge.
Brakes are now done and summer tires are on. I’m getting too old for this shit though.
And although I should have changed the rotors, I decided to hell with it. I didn’t want to deal with irremovable screws. The brakes are fine for now. The pads might wear prematurely, but 90% of my driving is on the highway. This is the third set of pads in over 400,000 kms.
I used to work on cars and occasionally still do on my own. From an engineering pov I’ve never quite understood why any front wheel drive cars are still designed with the rotors on the inside of the hub. What advantage is there to having them there? Seems like from a manufacturing as well as maintenance perspective having them on the outside (where they just come off after moving the caliper) would be the norm.
No, these rotors are exactly where they should be, but they are also inexplicably held in place by two large’ish Philips screws into the hub.
I’ve never seen that arrangement before. And I’ll be damned if I wanted to start down the road of removing something else that was going to cause me major issues. I’ll live with the existing rotors.
Actually I mixed up two posters and wasn’t making sense, so I started over.
Car manufacturers say to leave the rotors be unless they’re too thin, warped beyond specs, or have gouges/grooves deeper than .060". I think a lot of rotors get resurfaced or replaced unnecessarily.
The cars that had that design were made from a Japanese point of view where pads were replaced long before they were half worn and rotors were not expected to wear significantly for the life of the car. We have a different approach (and cars stay on the road longer) in the U.S…
Whew! Vindicated. The reason I was going to replace them is that the stuck caliper pin resulted in one pad not really contacting the rotor for a while, and thereby rust on one side of the rotor was pretty bad. The back side of the rotor looked, meh OK, and the passenger side rotor (the side that doesn’t eat salt as much) looked just OK. I’m hoping the new pad on the driver’s side will strip off the rust. I have a feeling it will be just fine, eventually.
ETA: Does that Philips flathead require a different type of screwdriver, or does a normal Philips work?
