Posted on 1/21/2021
When you press your brake pedal, what happens? Either your car glides to a nice, smooth stop, or you jitter, vibrate, and squeak along to a halt, accompanied by the acrid smell of burning rubber. It can feel pretty catastrophic but is actually a fairly common scenario and usually indicates warped brake rotors. So what exactly is a brake rotor, and how does it become warped? Using the word "warped" is a bit misleading since uneven wear on the rotor is the actual culprit behind these problems. The rotor is an iron disc connected to the hub of your car's tire. When you press the brake pedal, brake pads clamp down onto the large surface area of the rotor and create friction, which resists the spin of the wheel and enables your car to slow down or stop. As you can imagine, this braking process creates a large amount of heat. This heat causes uneven wearing in two different ways. In one situation, the brake pads overheat. The grippy material comprising the pads becomes too so ... read more