Doing Your Car Brake Repair? Things You Need to Know

 You will be surprised to learn that you can repair and even change your vehicle’s disc pads easily, quickly and even without specialized tools. In addition, you will save a lot of money. Even if you are not interested in doing it yourself, knowing what it takes makes it easier for you to understand what your Team Honda professional mechanic may tell you one day.

Majority of the vehicles have front disc brakes these days. Front brakes wear out faster than the rear brakes and thus should be changed more often. You should change your car’s brake pads when they get thinner, especially when start to produce a metallic grinding or squeaking noise when you press their pedal. You need to predict when your car will need brakes repair through regularly inspecting your vehicle brake pads thickness. 

If the front end of your vehicle vibrates when you apply brakes, then your car brake rotors might be warped. When the rotors appear uneven grooved, they might be scored. In both cases, they might need to be replaced or repaired into a brake lathe. You may require an expert to help you in this procedure. 

Tools you will require:

·         Mechanical gloves to keep your hand clean and protect them

·         Jack and its stand

·         Lug wrench

·         Length wood or C-clamp to retract the piston

·         Wrench – socket, adjustable or open end wrench

·         Turkey baster for sucking out brake fluid

·         Piece of string, bungee cord or plastic tie

·         New brake pads

·         Can of brake fluid – check for the correct type from your owner manual

Two things which you should know before starting your repair:

Know your calipers

Most of the vehicles have a sliding caliper brake system. Others have fixed caliper assemblies. The procedure of changing these two type of calipers is quite different but easy. You should know vehicle caliper so that you can decide on which method to use when you start your car brake repair service.

Repair one side, then you move to the other

You should change you vehicle’s pads on one side from the start to the end before changing the other side. Because you are working on one side, you may turn your steering wheel so that the wheel you are working on is angled out for easier access to the brakes.

Above are the important things which you should know before starting the process of repairing your car brakes.

Car Break Repair

While the car repair rates and location are factors to be considered while selecting a car repair shop, another important consideration for selecting a car repair shop for car break repair, are the skills and experience of the car repair technicians who are employed or associated with the car repair shop. This may not be important for minor repairs to the car, like scratches, dents on the surface of the vehicle, but when there are major problems in the car, especially intermittent problems which cannot be easily replicated; an experienced car repair technician is needed to find a lasting solution to the problem.

Usually the car repair technician will have undergone a basic vocational course training him in the intricacies of car design and repair. After this he will apprentice with an experienced car repair technician who will teach him the practical aspects of car break repair. Initially he will have to observe the experienced car repair technician at work, and understand the various common problems faced by car owners. He can ask his senior any doubt he has about the various procedures and troubleshooting techniques for car repair.

After some time, the trainee car repair technician will assist his experienced senior in the various car break repair related tasks. After he has gained sufficient experience, he may be asked to complete minor repair tasks himself independently. The seniors and supervisors will then review the car break repair work completed and offer suggestions for improvement if necessary. Based on the aptitude and interest of the car repair technician, he may allocated more complex car repair jobs in the same garage or allowed to operate independently.

As the number of cars is always increasing, the demand for experienced and honest car break repair technicians has been increasing rapidly. In many cases, the car repair technician may be tempted to present an inflated bill for car break repairs to the car owner taking advantage of the ignorance of the car owner about the car break, car design and operation. However, there is always a possibility that the car owner will cross check the billing for car break repairs with other sources, and if he or she finds that they have been cheated, it will destroy the relationship in the long term. So a skilled car repair technician, who has his customers’ best interests in mind, will always be in demand and get business from referrals.