What happens if my rotors are warped

Brake discs, like other cars parts, are prone to wear and tear over time. You should have your rotors and other components of the brake system such as pads and callipers inspected on a regular basis to ensure your safety on the road. Click here to experience your free assessment at Astro Brake today! Warped rotors significantly increase your stopping time , which can mean the difference between life and death in an emergency.

This will happens regardless of the smoothness of the surface or your response on the wheel. This is especially more noticeable if the warped rotor is on the drive axle and the slow stoppage of your car becomes quite evident even to people on the outside. A warped rotor affects your brakes and can cause them to fail temporarily.

In an emergency, the brake pads start to wiggle back and forth, which makes the brake fluid form up, affecting the amount of hydraulic pressure aiding the braking system. If you are driving and you lose control over your brakes, you will start to waver and hit other drivers around you. On a bad day, warped rotors can create a traffic disaster. Beyond just the inconvenience of shaking, this can raise safety concerns and create trouble for your brakes. Unlike other vehicle problems, warped rotors will only cause your vehicle to shake when you are braking.

If you are experiencing shaking during acceleration, you likely have a different vehicle issue, such as an alignment or balancing concern more on these below. Depending on how warped your rotors are, a mechanic may be able to straighten them. Brake rotor resurfacing involves scraping down the warped metal to achieve a smooth surface.

However, it is becoming increasingly common for rotors to be replaced rather than fixed for three main reasons:. Thankfully, rotor replacement services are also accessible solutions that will eliminate the vehicle shaking and restore your braking safety.

Your tires are designed to coordinate their direction with the movement of your steering wheel. However, over time, the turbulence of the road can cause one or more of your wheels to rest at a deviated angle. Naturally, this creates issues for your vehicle, your tires, and your control on the road. There must be enough abrasive elements to keep the disc surface clean, and the pads must provide uniform adherent friction material transfer to the disc within the intended temperature range. Uneven Friction Material Transfer: Pads that are used beyond their intended temperature range will cause problems.

Pads can be heated to the point where they transfer friction material to the disc in random, uneven patches. The thick and thin layers are not generally visible, but the driver can feel vibration and measure it with a dial indicator.

Modern brake pads are engineered with the best possible combination of features, but they are still limited to their intended range of operating temperatures. Pad Selection: Generally, there are street, performance and racing brake pads, and most quality pads have broader temperature ranges than pads made 10 years ago.

However, no street pads are suitable for racing, and no racing pads are suitable for the street. Where to Start: If you have vibration under braking with new discs and pads, first eliminate the obvious by making sure that the hub and wheel flange are flat, clean, and rust free. A miniscule amount of run-out here will be magnified at the edge of the brake disc.

Verify that disc mounting hardware is in good condition, installed correctly, and tightened in the correct order according to the recommended torque specification. Bedding-In Your Brakes When new pads and brake discs are fitted, the most important thing you can do to prevent problems is to properly bed the brakes.

This critical step is the initial transfer of friction material from the pad to the disc forming a smooth, uniform layer. It minimizes the chance of laying down uneven, random patches of friction material which will be felt as vibration when the brakes are applied. All high-performance discs and pads should come with installation and break-in instructions. The procedures are similar for all major manufacturers. If you come to a complete stop before the break-in process is completed, there is a chance that nonuniform pad material transfer or pad imprinting will take place, resulting in an irritating vibration during braking.

Apart from the fact that air wrenches are generally not calibrated to any particular value, the first use of the wrench causes the air pressure, and therefore, its effective torque to decrease, causing the compressor to kick in, which raises the air pressure in the system again.

The only way to avoid deformation and subsequent run out on brake rotors assuming that the rotors were installed correctly, in the first place , is to use a properly calibrated torque wrench to tighten wheel. In addition, tightening should always be done in a cross-wise aka star pattern , with the two fasteners that are the furthest away from each other being tightened in pairs, and preferably in two steps to load the rotor evenly.

There are many online resources that describe comparison tests in terms of the repeatable accuracy of torque sticks, and it turns out that few brands score well in this department. Although this article does not pretend to be the last word on uneven brake rotor wear, we hope that you find the information presented here both informative and useful, and that it will help you diagnose brake pedal pulsation issues with confidence.

Toggle navigation Navigation. Moreover, high spots as indicated by dial gauges always coincide with thickness variations on the rotor, which seems to be linked to the type of brake pads on the vehicle in the sense that some types of brake pads seem to produce more pronounced thickness variations than others, which begs this question- What causes thickness variations on brake rotors?

Of course, no technician can be blamed for the way some customers use the brakes on their vehicles, but in many cases, the uneven transfer of friction material from brake pads to brake rotors is the direct result of how we install brake rotors, which brings us to- The things we forget when installing brake rotors We all know that the mating surfaces on both the hub and new rotor must be free of dust, dirt, rust, metal shavings and other debris and we usually do a proper job of cleaning both surfaces, but how often do we actually test the run out on the new rotor after it was fitted to the hub?

Wheel hub mounting faces are often not flat, or perfectly true with respect to the axle centre line Long use, continued exposure to heat, vibration, shock loads, and the long-term effects of less than perfect wheel bearings can deform the mounting face of a wheel hub to the point where a rotor that is mounted on the hub will either deform when it is bolted down, or show excessive run out even though the rotor itself may be in perfect condition.

Few brake rotors are perfectly true in all axes Brake rotors are mass-produced in huge numbers, which means that even though most randomly chosen rotors from a particular production run will conform to specs, small differences in the temperature of the manufacturing environment, wear on cutting tools used in machining process, and other factors produce dimensional differences between individual rotors. It is important to keep the above in mind, because the next section deals with- The mistakes we often make when installing brake rotors As described elsewhere, the predominant cause of brake pedal pulsations is the uneven transfer of friction material between brake pads and brake rotors that occurs when brake pads come into intermittent contact with brake rotors even when there is zero pressure on the brake system when significant amounts of run out is present on the rotors.

Conclusion Although this article does not pretend to be the last word on uneven brake rotor wear, we hope that you find the information presented here both informative and useful, and that it will help you diagnose brake pedal pulsation issues with confidence.