You are driving down the road in your Honda when suddenly the stoplight ahead turns red. As your foot hits the brake pedal, you hear a scrubbing sound coming from under the car. Since you’ve never heard that sound before, you realize that your car is trying to tell you something. Well, the answer is likely that your brake pads are worn. You will need to have your brakes checked, and the folks at Fremont Foreign Auto can do just that.
A Basic Understanding of Brakes on a Honda
All Honda vehicles have a disc brake system on both the front and rear wheels. A plate-like disc that is situated behind the tire on each wheel is the surface on which your pads rub. When the brakes are applied, the car forces the pads to come into contact with the (disc) rotor, and the friction generated slows and stops the vehicle. Over time, this repetitive action wears on the pads and rotors, meaning that eventually there is no longer a pad thick enough to make good contact with the disc.
Brand new Honda brake pads are 11 mm thick. Each time you bring your car in for routine maintenance, and you are having your tires rotated, it is always a good idea to have the technician check the width of the brake pads. (If the technician tells you that your pads are 6 mm, then you know that you have about half left). Note: Anything less than 3 mm is considered unsafe. While Honda suggests that a thorough inspection of the pads and rotors be done every 15k miles, the amount of wear will be determined by how you drive. If you tend to brake aggressively, with sudden stops or starts, chances are your car will need the brakes to be replaced more often.
The Relationship Between Pads and Rotors
The brake pad needs a very smooth surface on the disc so that the entire pad can make good contact with the disc. At times, brake pads will wear in such a way as to scratch and make grooves in the rotor. When this is the case, the technician can put a machine on each wheel to “turn” the rotors. A small cutting tool shaves off any grooved imperfections that might exist, creating a clean, smooth surface.
However, if the grooves and scratches on the disc (rotor) are more serious, the rotors will need replacing. (This is particularly the case if you have been ignoring the sounds coming from under your car.) Replacing the rotors is more expensive than just smoothing them out, so you need to be prepared to pay more for ignoring what your car was trying to tell you.
Does Every Pad Wear Evenly?
It is not unusual to have the front pads at a different thickness than the rear pads. Honda makes FWD (front-wheel drive) cars, so usually, the front brakes will need to be repaired before the ones on the rear axle. Like tires, the car works best if the pads on the front and the rear are equal on both sides.
The technicians at Fremont Foreign Auto can show you the exact width of your pads and the damage to your rotors, so you don’t have to pay more than you need to.
