Welcome to the world of advertizing. Just cause the vendor says it's better, is no assurance it really is. Remember you can put anything on paper to enhance it's attractiveness. The life of a rotor is indefinite. However some brake pads are so poorly engineered they wear the rotor instead of pad material. Some owners are so agressive they overheat and cause distortion. Dirt and corrosion can eat they up quickly. Improper torquing of lug nuts has caused the failure of many rotors. Even setting outside and letting rotor rust except where pad is at will cause rotor thickness varation and big problem. Varation of .0005 inch will cause vibs. Runout of .002 inch generally will not cause vibration.

 

Thanks for the response. I'm going to pull the rotors, and hopefully get them trued up correctly. It's going to cost me about $20 a rotor, so it's cheaper than buying new ones. Of course, if the shop screws them up, I guess I'll be buying new ones anyway...

 

The shop was successful in turning the rotors. No more vibrations, so I'm happy. The HD pads I got from Carquest are nowhere near as good as the Hawk ones I had before though. Of course, that may have been the problem. Now all I have to do is get new shoes for the rear, and replace the rear wheel cylinder.

 

If I'm not too late, look into the shoes that fit the dulleys from what I understand they are about a 1/2" wider and will fit inside our drums. If I am wrong about this I hope someone will let us know. I want to upgrade to the bigger shoes when I need new ones.

Floyd

 

No, I haven't done the rears yet. I had to wait for payday. I will probably be doing the rears in the next couple weeks.

 

Did you bleed the brake lines after the install of pads and rotors?

I replaced my pads/rotors on my 2002 and it had a bad shake when I was slightly braking. I had bled the lines from after the install but started seeing a shake. I went and bled them again back to front and now have no shudder.

-CM