msrecant

I dropped my RX-8 off at the dealer today for its 16 month checkup. It only has about 10,500 miles on it. For the past 4 months I have noticed increasing vibration when braking ar higher speeds. As I expected, they ended up turning all four rotors.

My questions (to anyone who can help) are:

1. What would cause the rotors to require turning after only 10,500 miles?

2. Is there some driving habit I have that would damage the rotors and cause this problem?

3. Is it likely to happen again after the next 7,500 to 10,000 miles, particularly since nothing else has changed.

My driving style is not extreme. I do not race or autocross. The RX-8 is used primarily for around town driving.

On the up-side, and unexpectedly, they did covered it under warranty.

Dark8

Here is a good read: http://www.stoptech.com/whitepapers/...otors_myth.htm

theCATALYST

I was led to believe (and CORRECT me if I am wrong guys) that if you splash through a moderate amount of cool water while your rotors are hot that it can cause them to warp. Was I told wrong?

msrecant

Thanks for the info ... very helpful!

Sociopath

I think you might have bad rotors to begin with, which could be why your dealership decided to cover the repairs under warranty. My driving style is exactly the opposite compared to you: I normally drive and brake pretty hard, even going to work. I've taken car to track events 2 times so far, and I have 20K miles on my car and I'm still running on original pads. I'm about to change pads (to EBC Green Stuff), I haven't experienced any of the symptoms you've described.

I don't know if this helps you or not

Sociopath

You are right. I was also told that cooling down the rotors too fast could cause them to warp

1.3L-of-pure-crack

If thats true I'm screwed. I live in Oregon.

Seriously though, I have to resurface rotors at work and most of the damage I see is from people not changing there pads when they should. Very few are actually warped and considering how much rain we get here I don't think cold water is the culprit. The ones I do see that are warped usually have hot spots from excessive heat caused by hard driving or racing.

just my 2 cents.

msrecant

I am finally getting around to telling the ending of this story.

The service department claims the problem is due to runout (wobble). They were unable to ive me a cause for this occurring on a relatively new car other than "brakes are always problems".

Since I have only had this problem on my RX-8 and, previously, my Miata, I am assuming it has something to do with higher performance brake pads vs the street pads they put on family sedans. Hence I decided to see if bedding would improve my chances of avoiding a reoccurance.

Luckily we have a relatively new 10 mile long toll-road in our area. It is straight and flat with only three interchanges (start, airport and end) and goes through a sparsely populated area. Hence the traffic is light at night. I went out there after 11pm and went through the bedding drill, did a cool down and repeated the process on the way back into town. All the time I was wary of state troopers and other drivers who might not appreciate someone going up and down from 60 to 10 mph on an Interstate. Bottom line ... I getting too old for this stress ....

Braking is fine now, neither the resurfacing or the bedding screwed anything up. Will have to see if stays that way.

schrottie

Thats some info. Thanks a bunch!