Brake Shudder And How To Fix It

Life throws you enough rubbish on a daily basis, children fighting in the back seat, the sentence “he is looking out my window” triggers rage in all parents. Your are left thinking “I’m pretty sure they are all MY windows as I paid for the blasted thing”. The fuel warning light is on your dash, your partner is off work crook and you have to somehow get to the super market and buy a series of overpriced, hormone filled items to load your children up with god knows what and proceed to wonder why they develop behavioural issues.
Racing your family vehicle to the local shopping centre, the straw that brakes the camels back is that annoying pulsating that come through the car as you apply the brakes. Your frustrations start to peak as you try to comprehend why your SUV has suddenly developed Parkinsons disease.
It has only ever done this since the brakes were replaced. Your mechanic must be some sort of drug smuggling crook to deliberately do this to your car. Unfortunately your knee jerk diagnoses of your local tradesman moral values is marginally inaccurate at best.
The issue at hand is the metal compound that is used to make your Disc rotor.
Disc rotors are part of the braking system which the brake pads clamp to and cause the car to slow down. The metal is used to dissipate heat from the brakes allowing them to cool as quickly as possible. It is common practice when replacing the brake pads to machine the disc rotor to create a perfect surface for the new pads ignorer to maximise the breaking efficiency.
The inevitable consequence of doing this machining or skimming of the disc rotor is it is reducing the overall thickness of the rotor itself and intern it has less metal available to do the heat dissipating duties it is required to do.
The result is the brakes can now overheat and cause the rotor to twist causing the shudder you are experiencing.
There are several vehicles on the market that are prone to do this more than not. The Ford Territory and the BA Falcon are renowned for it along with the Mitsubishi Territory and the Honda Odyssey. In most cases this is caused by large vehicles not fitted with big enough brakes. Engineers may have dropped the ball on those vehicles.
How do you fix this issue?
Machining the rotor will stop the fault temporarily but it will return in a short period of time. Replacing the rotors with new ones is better and if you can afford it replace them with the genuine product from the dealership rather than cheap rubbish made in countries with questionable work safety policies.
In recent times DBA has released a product called the Kangaroo Paw. We have been experimenting with fitting these to vehicle experiencing this fault. So far we have had success with it however it may be to early to definitively state this is the best solution for this issue. If you are game to be a gunning try the kangaroo paw product and let us know your results.
You can purchase the Kangaroo Paw from any reputable spare parts store.

 

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