M
Mike Marlow
A dial caliper can't easily measure run-out and a lathe doesn't measure
anything, so I basically don't believe you have ever checked a brake
rotor. A caliper could measure thickness variation, but not warpage. A
dial indicator in conjunction with a lathe could measure warpage, but only
if the rotor was installed true in the lathe and that wouldn't be easy.
The least little off-axis mounting would look like warpage when the lathe
was spun.
Matt - you get too hung up on little things and overlook the obvious. Claim
what you will, but if you've never mounted and turned a rotor I'm not going
to spend any time arguing about what "could" be happening. I'm happy to let
you believe what you read on a web site as the hidden answer to rotor
problems, and I'll simply bumble along fixing cars in my ignorance. I'm
really not going to spend a lot of time trying to satisfy your needs for
empiracle evidence to refute something you read.
Easiest is to just spin the rotor on the car with a magnetic mount dial
indicator.
And I do stand corrected on this point, in that I should have said dial
indicator. Don't know how the word caliper slipped in there unless it was
in the front of my mind - this being a brake discussion. Regardless, if
you'd have worked on pulsing pedal problems you'd certainly have verified
warped rotors with an indicator.
Let me challenge that article this way Matt - how much depositing and
imprinting is necessary to cause a noticeable pulse in the pedal? How much
to create wild pulsing at highway speed? How does this buildup occur in
such varying depths around a 10" disk that is turning at highway speeds with
(near) constant brake pressure, while 5 hard stops is all it takes to clean
it up?