The mechanic has to ensure that all his cutomers leave happy. That means all brake jobs must include good, even, coplaner, and consistant frictional surfaces, with sufficient material that they won’t warp. The shop cannot afford to tie up the bay and their mechanic redoing a percentage of their brake jobs. Nor can they afford the bad word-of-mouth. That makes new rotors a necessary part of the process.
Your friend, who knows exactly how straight and true his vehicle stops every time, can evaluate his rotors and determine if a replacement is needed. And, if he makes a mistake, he grumbles a bit and replaces the rotors. No harm, no foul.
The proper repair is service the rotors, pure and simple, and anything else is a side issue. A disclaimer signature on a piece of paper doesn’t mean anything when that now irate customer is telling everyone in the 'hood how they got an inferior brake job.
The same premise applies to every area on a car, or home for that matter. Would one change an air compressor without flushing the system or changing the drier? Would one change a fuel pump without changing the strainer or filter?
When it comes to repairing the roof on a home does one repair damage underneath or shingle over it and hope no one notices?
Consider this one from many years ago. Guy brings a nice carbureted Subaru in and the carb needs overhauled. The car still had the original fuel/air filters on it. (Absolutely filthy too.)
I had a carb kit in stock but had to order out the filters. He stated he wanted the old filters reused and would take the car as is.
After some back and forth with both him and his uncle I said they could take it but with a disclaimer absolving me of all responsibility if there were any problems. No problem they said, and the guy signed off on it while telling me that he was going to pick up filters on the way home and change them that evening. (They never did pick up new filters for the car.)
Less than 2 weeks later the car came in on the wrecker for refusing to idle at all. Examination showed that what happened was a minute piece of debris came loose from that nasty air filter while the engine was at idle. The debris did the one in a million thing and just happened to enter the primary air bleed; obstructing it and causing the engine to die and refuse to idle instead of entering the engine and being vaporized.
Neither uncle or car owner remembered one word about nasty filters, my advice about not driving the car with filters like that, or the signed disclaimers. They argued their position right up to the point where I showed them my copy of the repair order. They had done the usual of course and “lost” their copy.
What part of “Customer was strongly advised to not operate the car due to nasty filters and insisted on operating the vehicle anyway” do they not understand?
You know the one thing that really torqued me about this incident? The uncle had been a good Subaru customer for about 7 years and would not allow anyone but me to touch his car, either at the Subaru dealer or in my own shop.
After this incident with the nephew’s car he never visited me again for any service, large or small.
Apparently the twisted comprehension is that somehow this incident was all my fault when the reality is that it was mostly the nephew with a dash of uncle thrown in. They were both present through the entire episode.
Well, I’m not trying to be combative either (and I don’t take your arguments as such) but my position is that mechanics are always getting blamed for something breaking right after the car was in the shop, even if it’s completely unrelated. I don’t have to have ever worked as a mechanic or in a service department to know that - all I have to do is read the myriad of threads on here with people asking stuff like “I just got new tires and now my car doesn’t start. What did the shop do to it?”
I should clarify that I understand entirely where you’re coming from. While I haven’t worked in the automotive service industry, I have worked in the computer service industry, and the same crap happens to those guys (I fortunately don’t do that any more) as happens to you. They’ll come in with some old computer that was a piece of junk when they bought it new, and want you to install memory. You’ll do it and then 2 weeks later they’ll be back in with a blown video card, blaming you for it. The difference is that we did not replace other components unless it was absolutely necessary for the work we were supposed to do.
The question I’d ask about your Subaru example is: Do you think they would have visited you ever again had you refused to do the job unless they let you replace the filter? My guess is they’d have gone elsewhere for the carb rebuild, and you’d have lost that business too.
I’ll also point out that your example isn’t exactly in line with what we’re discussing here. An old dirty filter obviously needs to be changed. If the rotors are warped or damaged, they obviously need to be changed. I don’t have a problem with changing things that obviously need to be changed.
As I said in my first paragraph, if you work on a car, and anything on that car breaks within a week or two of your service, you’re going to be blamed for it. Even if they don’t come back and yell at you, they blame you, and they’re probably looking for a new mechanic. That was my point when I said that the logical extension is that you have to replace the entire car every time you do any work.
After all, when you do a pad change, and you insist on changing the rotors whether they need it at the time or not, do you also replace the brake lines? How do you know they’re not breaking down internally, which will lead to problems? Do you replace the master cylinder? There are all sorts of brake components that you don’t replace that could be worn and cause problems down the road, and as you’ve said, you will be blamed for them. Why only replace the rotors?
“After all, when you do a pad change, and you insist on changing the rotors whether they need it at the time or not, do you also replace the brake lines?”
The likelihood of a re-used rotor causing a callback (tv repair lingo vs ‘comeback’) is much higher than an existing brake line.
Maybe 20% vs .1%.
If I was working on aircraft maybe I’d worry about a .1% callback rate.
The clutch is a wear item. Should it be replaced when you exchange transmission fluid?
(edit)
I’m not trying to be petty here - I agree that rotors are wear items. Wear items should be replaced when, or just before, they wear out. If the rotor is still in good shape when you do the pads, there’s no need to replace it. If the only reason that you are replacing the rotor is, not because it needs replacement but because you’re worried about dealing with an annoyed customer, then it should be replaced on your dime, not the customer’s. It’s not the customer’s problem that the mechanic is worried about a potential future conflict. As I said originally, get it in writing if you’re worried and then do the job the customer needs done. If you want to go above and beyond, that’s fine, but don’t charge them for it unless they agree to it.
I’ve never exchanged my fluid in my manual trannys.
But in truth, a clutch job is probably an excellent analogy. Changing rotors when doing a brake job is very analogous to changing the pressure plate assembly and throwout bearing when doing a clutch job. In both cases one is changing those wear items directly related to the primary wear component, the brake pads and the clutch plate, that is being replaced to restore proper frictional characteristics. As a matter of fact it isn’l unheard of to “turn” a flywheel surface when doing a clutch job if the surface is scored or glazed.
And in both cases one is doing 90% of the work anyway. In that note it’s also analogous to changing the water pump when replacing a timing belt. Most of the labor to do so has to be done anyway, and it is a wear item, so prudence suggests doing the pump while you’re there.
Unlike water pumps, rotors give you plenty of warning before they fail. Unlike pressure plates, rotors are easy to get to and don’t cost $1000 in labor alone.
A rotor that isn’t warped when it enters the shop is not going to be warped when it leaves the shop. A rotor that isn’t scored when it enters the shop is not going to become scored when it leaves (unless you screwed up the pad job, in which case new rotors won’t help) and so it’s not going to contribute to excessive pad wear (but a bad caliper will, and it will also contribute to warping the rotor - should you replace that?) A rotor is a hunk of metal. It doesn’t have any moving parts, or springs, or electrical connections. It’s just a chunk of iron. If it’s not damaged when it gets to you, and you do the pads properly, and the driver doesn’t suddenly turn into a nut who thinks he’s in the Indy 500 all the time, it’s probably not going to get damaged any time soon after the brake job.
Obviously, the customer could be lying about the rotor. Maybe it is warped, and he knows it, but doesn’t want to pay for the job. Or maybe he’s the Customer From Hell (yes, I do know they exist, and have dealt with plenty of them over the years) who knows it’s warped and is hoping to con you into doing the job for free by complaining about it after you do the pads. As long as you have it in writing that he declined rotor replacement, and any problems with the rotors are his problems, not yours, you’re protected. Sure, you might lose his business, but who wants business from a Customer From Hell anyway? You’ll lose my business if you insist on replacing parts that don’t need replacing (unless, as mentioned, you volunteer to pay for it, in which case you’re welcome to it) and I’m pretty loyal when I find a good shop, and I certainly don’t go around looking for ways to screw the mechanic.
I just bought a used 2000 subaru outback with under 90K miles from a toyota dealer. I took it in for an inspection at a subaru dealer and they told me that the front brake rotors were warped ($125), The head gaskets and tube seal were leaking ($2412) and the transmission gear input shaft was leaking ($370). I took the car back to the dealer I bought it from thinking these would be covered under the lemon law, but they said nothing was wrong and that the subaru dealer service department was likely just trying to get me to use their service. So, all the toyota dealer did was rotate the the brake rotors and balance the tires. They wouldn’t do anything else. Who do I trust? The toyota dealer showed me under the car to impress upon me that there was no leaking, but I don’t know what I am looking at. It did look significantly cleaner than the car next to it, which they also showed me. I know this thread is on just brake rotors, but I thought the whole story might be best. Thanks.
Jwiens, I think in your case you have an entirely diffent problem, and a misunderstanding of what went on at the Subie dealer and the Toyota dealer.
First, one does not “rotate rotors”. To rotate the rotors would mean removing the one on the left and exchanging it for the one on the right. There would be absolutely no purpose to this, and it would probably create problems. Tires are the only things that get “rotated”, with the wheels attached.
Clean means little. A leak can show up as a simple hanging drop, while a car with no tranny leak can be a mess underneath.
You bought the car from a Toyota dealer, brought it to a Subie dealer for inspection, and they told you it needed work. You brought it back to the Toyota dealer hoping to get it repaired, and they said it doesn;t need work, the Subie dealer is just trying to make money off of you.
From here we can’t tell who’s telling you the truth. You’ll need an opinion from a third shop.
I can tell you, however, that if it does need work it won’t be covered by a Lemon law. Those apply only to chronic problems on new cars. And then they only apply if the problem renders the car unusable too often.
Lemon laws won’t apply, no, but a third shop (as suggested a couple times), can at least give you an unbiased verdict, and then a warranty (if you got one) might might apply.
