Re: Brake drums

["Power British Performance Parts, Inc." <britcars@powerbritish.com>]

SpitRacer9@aol.com wrote:

> My guess is that this is a safety issue and a liability issue.  The drums are
> very rusted, I assume this on the outside.  He turns the drums down to
> minimum thickness or close to it to true them up.  The metal on the outside
> is fatiqued and brittle.  Sounds to me like a mechanic trying to cover his
> a**.  What he is trying to avoid is the drum breaking and you coming back and
> suing him.  I know a few mechanics and they would all rather install new bits
> instead of fixing old ones.
>
> aaron

I'm always amazed whenever I do brake work on my wife's or my own daily driver
transportation ('96 & '97 Chevy's) at how incredibly rusty the drums and rotors 
are.
My full-size Chevy truck is only two years old and has already been through 
it's first
set of front brakes at 32,000mi.  The pile of rusty debris off the rotors that 
I swept
up off the floor completely filled my dustpan.  Our old shop was next to an
independent guy who I thought was a good mechanic.  He did a lot of brake work 
on late
model cars and his brake lathe rarely got used as most of the new car brakes 
are so
thin that one clean-up pass in the lathe puts them under spec.

While I agree that there are some questionable mechanics out there that 
deliberately
exaggerate problems to jack up the bill, I can also see that the mechanic in 
question
could be a good mechanic and have legitimate reservations about not replacing 
the
drums.

I would go down to the shop and speak with the mechanic and look at the brakes 
with
him.  You should be able to tell in a few minutes by the way he explains he 
problem to
you, in his mannerisms, and attitude, if he's for real or not.

Cheers!

Brian Schlorff    '61 TR-4     '64 TR-4     '72 TR-6     '79 Spit
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