What are some car-repair jobs you always wished you could do but have never done?

Teaching the trade, yes, bound to cause tears at times.

Done hundreds and hundreds of alignments.

Ditto. Been there, measured that. ;-)

Overtightening wheel nuts or uneven tightening of same will cause warpage of discs.

Exactly. The new pads will charcoal grill on the high spots and *never* properly bed in.

Brake pulling is most likely as the most grooved disc will have less surface contact.

Every two years at a minimum was what it used to be. The fluid is hygroscopic and will absorb moisture out of the air or anywhere it can.

About 12 hours ago when I parked the car.

Unless it's a gear driven camshaft the pushrod design will have a chain. Other than bikes I don't there are many gear drives because of the fitting problems. My Harley has gears but they are factory matched. Aftermarket cams tend to be noisier because of the wider tolerance.

Cheaper? No, you're wrong on that one.

As an alleged engineer you should be ashamed of yourself. Your thinking lacks logic too, if you think a 1955 Chevy rings is the same as used today.

Doubt you'll believe it anyway.

There are principally 2 common types of formulation for a brake pad friction material, organics and sintered metallics (there are also brake pads known as ?semi-metallics? but these are a ?hybrid blend? of the two aforementioned friction types and thus have properties that typically lie somewhere in the middle). For more information on the different brake pad constructions read our article ?How to make brakes?. Organic brake pads inherit their name from the organic phenolic resins used to bind together the different compounds used in the pads construction. There are countless different types of thermoset phenolic resin, but they can all be generally considered to have a maximum temperature up to which they are thermally stable. Above its intended maximum operating temperature, just like any organic matter, the phenolic resin used as the binding agent becomes altered by the heat and effectively ?boils?, expelling an appreciable volume of gas as it degrades. (The actual technical term for this process is sublimation, since once the phenolic material reaches the critical temperature it jumps from its original solid state and changes instantaneously to a gas, with no detectable liquid phase).

The dominant mechanism causing brake fade is this thermal degradation of the phenolic resins and other materials in the friction lining, which create a film of gas at the pad-rotor interface and effectively causes the brake pad to skid off the disc. As these gasses build up at the pad-rotor interface, they produce an appreciable backpressure which creates an opposing force to the brake caliper that is trying to hold the pads against the rotor. If there is no way for the gasses to escape, the opposing force as a result of the outgassing can become large enough to prize the pads away from the rotor, reducing the area of pad in contact with the rotor and thus reducing braking power (i.e. brake fade).

Sounds as much fun as my '60 Rambler American. Can you believe a 6 cyl flathead engine!? Got it fer $25 w/ rebuilt engine and rodded radiator and heater core. I broke it in moving from Sacto to Salem, OR.

Sucker ran like a scalded cat! The feds had jes instituted the 55mph speed limit and this sucker was at home @ 70mph. I had no driver's side window, but the heater would bake bread, even with that window missing and outside temps in the 20's (F).

Oh, the stories I could tell. ;)

nb

My Corvairs are geared-cam.

"Garbage Machines"

I generally did when doing any major brake work (drums, rotors, pads or shes) - just s thorough bleed.

It's marketing bullshit and it's track related, but it has nuggets inside it just like all bullshit does.

For example, it's interesting they don't mention the rotor (but of course, they're selling pads) when they say "Brake fade is caused by overheating of the brake pad".

It's also interesting they talk about 'green fade' which makes sense since a more complex look at friction reveals that there is a microlayer of pad deposition on the rotor which "covalently bonds" in a way that I don't completely understand, with the hot pad, where *breaking* those chemical bonds adds to friction but only after a good bedding occurs.

They skip all that, and concentrate on water, surface area, and volatiles, but I think the early fade is due more to the lack of covalent bonding than anything else.

I gotta run so I'll get back to this, but it's a typical marketing job trying to make believe they're being scientific when they don't mention even once the pad ratings nor the word "warp", but I have to go before I finished it as I have to pick someone up at the airport.

When I listed transmission in the original post, I meant manual, and specifically I meant clutch which, as you know better than I do, means a few more parts like a. clutch b. pressure plate c. pilot and throwout d. slave and master e. flywheel

I'm not sure what else offhand, but had I just done the job once, I'd know.

I think the only "special" tools needed are a transmission jack and the tools to align the clutch and pull out the old bearings where people jury rig all sorts of solutions but where I'd likely buy the right tool.

Seems to me the special tools are about $200 to $300 at most, which is about what the labor costs would be. And the job isn't like an alignment where you have to do a lot more than normal thinking.

Maybe some day I'll do it but probably never. I lost my chance, and I regret that.

I agree with you that the so-called "pros" say a lot of things that are pure horseshit, but usually they're just super overly conservative (like have your tires balanced every 10K miles or something like that).

You can't call them "wrong" but you can say "nobody does that".

I would agree with you on two things related to those articles: a. I don't agree with everything they say (they don't even agree with each other). b. But the net is that what most people call warp isn't warp at all.

There are few technical car topics on the net more filled with bullshit than rotor warp for street cars.

Nobody who says they have seen warp ever proves a single word they say. That's a fact.

Just try to find a picture or video of someone testing their rotors for warp (not runout!) and you'll see my point.

I'm done with warp because I provided references and I said it "can" happen but it's not happening in 99.9999999% of the cases.

Anyone who wants to dispute the references need only provide a reference.

Rotors are cheap. $50 for Brembo or Myle. I measure runout. I measure thickness. I measure thickness variation. I look at scoring. I look up the specs when I need them.

In practice, it's pretty simple:

1. Replace the OEM Jurid/Textar pads with Axxis/PBR FF equivalents.
2. Measure the thickness of the existing rotor
3. If it's too thin, replace with Meyle/Brembo for /wheel

I don't blame any shop for replacing *everything* they can. The more they replace, the more they make and the less people come back.

That's just logic.

The only time you don't have to mention the friction rating is when you purchase OEM pads. Otherwise, the friction rating is critical to mention.

I have nothing against OEM anything, but in the case of the bimmer, the FF Jurid pads in the front make a black dust that is objectionable.

For some reason, which I don't believe the marketing of, the PBR/Axxis FF pads don't have that objectionable dust.

Nobody has ever given a good answer since "dustless" doesn't cut it.

All pads and rotors must dust. So we just assume that the dust from Axxis/PBR pads is not as objectionable as the dust from the OEM Jurid pads.

Both stop as well as indicated by the FF rating for both.

That must be it because you don't feel the effect of the primary pad imprint. You only feel the effect over time when it builds up to enough of the teeniest tinyiest amount to make the shuddering occur at speed.

My main point is that if people think their brakes actually 'warped' (ad in a potato chip), the short term solution always works but their long term solution can't possibly work.

The long term solution is, most of the time, to change their braking habits. Until they realize that their brake rotors didn't warp, they won't realize that the long term solution is what it is.

To me, that's the crime of people thinking their brakes actually warped.

I know. I know. But I was summarizing.

You can scrape the deposit off a bunch of free and easy ways.

1. Easiest is to run the re-bedding procedure
2. Easy but harder than that is to put some scratchy pads on
3. Harder than those two by far is to have them machined or replaced

I do what you do, which is I rebed them which is easily enough done if you have a long downhill straightaway with no traffic or a highway straightaway with no traffic.

In summary, the *crime* of people believing that the rotors actually warped is that they never implement the correct long term solution. So they're constantly complaining that their rotors warped.

Actually, I paid $100 to watch him and ask questions where I watched EVERYTHING he did, since I want to do the job myself, some day.

I'll probably NEVER do it ... but I want to.