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
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Power British Check out Power British
1242 E. Ridge Pike on the 'net!
Plymouth Meeting, PA 19462
(610) 270-0505 http://www.powerbritish.com/~britcars
---------------------------------------------------------------------
|