Shaking in steering wheel

[whitey4311]

So I have only 11k miles and already my steering wheel is shaking when I touch the brakes but only at 70mph and above. I would hate to already do a brake job on it but this is getting annoying.

If I should replace the brakes already should I do front and rear at the same time and be done with it?

What should I do and could I please get a link to a set of pads that are better then stock and good for a daily driver?

If I shouldnt replace them yet I am thinking since it only happens at high speeds that my daily driving is all city and I dont feel any shaking at those low speeds so whey not run them longer and get some more use. I remember my Tacoma did this at about 1/2 way through the pads and I just delt with it until it was time to replace them.

Also I torque my wheels and dont feel that I am hard on the brakes at all so this is sort of bad to have happen so early. On the other hand since I do 100 miles a day all city driving I suppose they get used up more then normal.

Any help and links to good pads would be great. I figure I will just have the dealer do it while I get an oil change but I dont want these stock pads again so I would like to order some good ones and bring then in with me.

 

[MakeMeGoFast]

possibly warped rotors

 

[whitey4311]

Yeah I just called the dealer and the service guy said get in there ASAP cause the will warranty them up to 12k miles. So I will get new rotors for free, SWEET!

Why did this happen and what can I do to prevent it next time?

By the way he said to keep the stock pads for daily driving since performance pads are even harder on the rotors.

 

[khaydin]

Yeah I just called the dealer and the service guy said get in there ASAP cause the will warranty them up to 12k miles. So I will get new rotors for free, SWEET!

Why did this happen and what can I do to prevent it next time?

By the way he said to keep the stock pads for daily driving since performance pads are even harder on the rotors.

They warp if the rotor gets too hot from braking. Either they physically warp from the heat or pieces of your brake pad melt onto your rotor and create an uneven surface. You just need to change how you decelerate. If you see a light coming up ahead and it turns red just take your foot off the gas or drop the car into a lower gear to help with deceleration. Just don't keep your foot on the brakes for long periods of time. Learn to stop using a combination of the engine and brakes. You can also try pumping the brakes, just leave a couple seconds between pumps to let the rotors cool a little. And just don't be intimidated by people riding your ass because they want to go like 60mph up until like 20ft to whatever they have to stop for. If they don't like it they can change lanes.

 

[AutoXRacer]

Yeah I just called the dealer and the service guy said get in there ASAP cause the will warranty them up to 12k miles. So I will get new rotors for free, SWEET!

Why did this happen and what can I do to prevent it next time?

By the way he said to keep the stock pads for daily driving since performance pads are even harder on the rotors.

Rotors warp usually from extreme braking...like track days, etc...
Though, solid rotors should not warp... It happens.

I would not suggest high-performance pads. I once bought Street Hawk pads and they ate my rotors!!! Ever since then, I've used only factory pads, they are great for racing and daily driving...plus they don't produce a lot of brake dust. High-performance pads produce a lot of brake dust; sometimes the brake dust is so acidic that it will eat up your wheel's finish. I ruined a brand new set of wheels that way...

It would have been a great time to upgrade to slotted/cross drilled rotors.
But since the dealer is taking care of it...its all good...

I would suggest requesting that they also check your alignment!!!!

 

[whitey4311]

Sounds good guys, thanks.

I will have them inspect anything that may also result in the issues I am having like the alignment and arms, ect.

I really do think its just the brakes since it does it only when I lightly use them at highway speeds above 70mph.

The bad part is that I do engine brake and dont race or track use my car so I dont feel I was ever hard on the brakes other then occassional hard stops for traffic ect. I will really try and pay more attention to it this time around and I assume that I get another 12k mile warranty on the new rotors so if it happens again then its still on the dealer.

When I think about 100 miles a day being 95% all side streets I can see that even though 11k miles doenst sound like alot it likely is about the same as 30k highway miles or more.

 

[fourthmeal]

Dude, mine are doing the EXACT same thing. LOL, I'm at 11,400 miles. I better get in there QUICK!

It is more at 100+ for me though, the 70 range is barely noticeable. The 90-100 range is dangerously shaky, and although I know I shouldn't be playing at those speeds...comeon, we didn't buy this car for nothin'.

Good call on the warranty though, I'm happy they'll be covered (most likely.)

 

[clos561]

check your tire balance

 

[fourthmeal]

Clos, unfortunately, tire balance will factor in at speeds above 55ish, and happen regardless of acceleration, straight speed, or braking. This is only in braking.

 

[whitey4311]

Just did a tire rotation and balance and thought that would help but the tire guy told me it was the brakes as well since it only does it when I apply them.

Today I played with it a bit more and I only notice it at 65-70 and not hardly at all at higher or lower speeds. I dont understand why that is and I wonder if it still could be the rotors. I would imagine that if they were warped then I woudl feel it at most all speeds but not as much at lower speeds. The fact that at 80-90 I dont feel it I cant explain.

Oh well tomorrow at 8am I will have it all replaced and they said they will check the pads as well. I also am bringing that new recall notice on the imissions reflash and doing oil a bit early at 3k miles since I am already there.

PS tires can only be balanced up to 55mph on the balancer since I hear thats as fast as it goes. This is why it pays to have good tires if you are going to push the car from time to time.

 

[fourthmeal]

Whitey, a dynamic balance will balance out the wheels up to speeds well beyond double of that, no problem. The balance machine gets nowhere near 55mph, maybe 5-10mph...

But a wheel/tire assembly will balance pretty far out, provided the assembly was balanced at 0 mph, it will be balanced at 120+. Bubble balancing, the old method, was still effective if not time consuming and difficult. Though I do agree you must have good quality tires (not hard these days considering just how good they really are), and good wheels (a bit harder to find.)

Consider a motorcycle, and the balance they must take. My bike was glass smooth at 140+.


Oh, I have a theory as to why you may not have felt the shaking in the braking when you rotated the tires...I doubt it was the tires at all! There is a possibility that during this braking maneuver you were doing, both rotors had their warpages at the same spot relative to the caliper. That is very hard to explain in words, but visualize a rotor that has a tiny bend to it on the RF side of the car, and and another just like it on the LF. Every once in a while, the bends will oppose each other, and sometimes they will match each other, depending on how the front tires are rotated around turns and/or slipping from time to time. My theory is that if they are matched perfectly together, the brakes won't shake the wheel (because there is no opposing force), but the moment they oppose each other fully, the shake is very strong. In my days of diagnosing troubles like this in the auto shop, I tried to prove this theory but it is elusive. Still, the physics are there. The pedal would pulsate more theoretically if both rotors were aligned during the braking, but our pedal stays pretty stable. I think that is due to the pulsation dampers we have on our brake system.

Thoughts?

 

[whitey4311]

Well got the car done today and they didnt replace the rotors but just surfaced them. They said since no pulse in the pedal that it was unlikely warped so a resurface is what Mazda called for. What ever it was is gone now and they feel normal again.

Looking at the rotor surface I can see a big difference compared to how they looked before. Now they look like a nice stainless steel color that looks newly sanded. Before they looked a bit golden and when I ran my finger from the inside to the outside I could feel grooves and toward the top a lip developed meaning that the wear wasnt even due to the pad not extending past the top of the rotor. That is no big deal but I think the grooves are what the issue was and what I was feeling.

I researched on here and there were links to warped rotors being mostly a misunderstanding to other issues. For instance an article I read said that some brake pad material will become imbedded in the rotor at random spots and build up in one area due to even just one hard braking incident.

Being that I know they arent warped if this happens again in 10k more miles I will just cont to run them until the pads need to be changed then resurface again. If I were to resurface them every time I felt a tinny bit of steering wheel movement I would be replacing the rotors way too often when there is no longer the option to resurface another time.

I will cont to down shift and do my best to go easy on the brakes but if a resurface is all that was needed it could have waited longer with no issues other then the small shake at exactly 65-70 mph which is not a speed I brake at often.