I bought my wife a 2004 Dodge Intrepid almost 3 years ago. It now has 54,000 miles on it. At about 44,000 miles she started getting a very light grinding noise in the front when she put on the brake. I checked the brakes and had to put on new pads and have the rotors turned. Everything worked fine until a couple of weeks ago. Now when you put your foot on the brake, you get a shake in the front end. The faster you are going, the worse it is. I figure the rotors have warped. I am planning on replacing them this weekend. Does anyone know why the rotors seem to warp so soon after replacing the brakes. My Ford truck did the same thing about 2 years ago AFTER replacing the rotors.
Thank You for your help!

 

might be the breakpads wearing unevenly

 

Thank You for your response. Sorry I didn't get back to this last night but I had to cut the grass.
Do you have any idea what would cause the pads to wear unevenly? One thought I had was uneven torque on the lug nuts. Since the wheel is what holds the rotors tight. I have never used a torque wrench when doing repairs at home. I did recently purchase a 1/2" electric impact driver for home use so the next time I take the wheels off, I will use it to reinstall.

 

Yeah, the pads may not have been installed correctly, causing uneven wear,, happened to my wife's Concorde,, now it vibrates going down hill.. well you dont feel it, you can hear it. Torque wrench is your friend ;-)

 

Thanks for your help. I got the impact gun but, is the torque setting on these thing very accurate? I have talked to a couple of mechanic that use the torque specific socket (They look like color coded ratchet extensions but are made to apply a set torque with an impact gun.) and they love them. Have you ever used them? Any thoughts?[sm=gears.gif]

 

I never used an impact gun, not quite a mechanic lol.,, yet. hehe.. , not sure if anyone else here's tried this job with an impact gun.. I need to get one of em though,,

 

I am not a mechanic by trade either. But, since age 16, I have done alot of self learning. (Including putting together and getting running numerous "Basket Cases" of car and motorcycles.) Lately though I have been hearing alot about how important it is to consistantly torques the lug nuts. As far as the impact gun, I don't think it is manditory but it sure makes the job easier.

 

LOL yeah, I'm considering getting one to make my life a bit easier,, my brother is the real gearhead in the family, he's been tearing things appart since he was 12 LOL , I'm the computer geek in the family that got tired of paying people to fix things for me heh

 

Replaced the pads (With carbon/metallic [don't use anything else])and rotors today. I was able to get a set of "Torque Extensions" fro Harbor Freight. Everything now works great. JUST TO MAKE sure, I checked the torque with my 3/8 drive torque wrench and they were right on. Using the impact wrench and torque extension sure made the job easier? ALMOST can't wait until my truck, ALMOST!!
Thanks for your input!
Just out of curiosity, if you are the computer geek and you brother is the gear head, have you ever combined efforts and hooked up a computer to the OBD II using one of the diagnostic programs that you can purchase online?
[sm=gears.gif][sm=smarty.gif]

 

not yet but thats just cause I don't have that much $$$ to invest right now,, plus lack of time to work on both the Concorde and the ram when I work nights. There is allot of tweaking I'd like to do to both cars, but this is a pricey hobby, computers are cheaper to mod, unless yer dealing with production type servers that cost up to 100k a pop LOL