Brake disc skimming

Author
Discussion

Alfatim

Original Poster:

271 posts

270 months

Thursday 20th January 2011
quotequote all
Local garage just bought the whole setup to skim brake discs on the car. 10 mins per side, machine coming next week and Im first in the queue! Mill Lane Garage in Kingsley Cheshire if anyone is interested.

PM if you want number. Dont know how much it will cost yet, but much cheaper (and better imho) then another set of discs!
On the racecar, once a disc has been through its heat cycle and 'warped', when skimmed they rarely EVER go again

tr7v8

7,437 posts

243 months

Thursday 20th January 2011
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anonymous said:
[redacted]
Err yes & on the car

tr7v8

7,437 posts

243 months

Thursday 20th January 2011
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anonymous said:
[redacted]
Yes it is no different to pad or disc wear. My lathe was chosen specifically so I could skim discs of around 300mm or so although off the car.

Acheron

643 posts

179 months

Thursday 20th January 2011
quotequote all
How much is it costing?

Assuming you're not driving something with vented ceramic dinner-plate discs, would it not just be easier to get some cheap and nasty (but new) unipart d&p's?

vrooom

3,763 posts

282 months

Thursday 20th January 2011
quotequote all
what the point of doing those. as seeing the disc are £30. unless you are skinflint.

tr7v8

7,437 posts

243 months

Thursday 20th January 2011
quotequote all
Some cars are notorious for distorted discs, even new ones, also not many discs are £30 these days.

XG332

3,927 posts

203 months

Thursday 20th January 2011
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I changed mine at £17 a pair.

Deva Link

26,934 posts

260 months

Thursday 20th January 2011
quotequote all
Alfatim said:
Local garage just bought the whole setup to skim brake discs on the car. 10 mins per side, machine coming next week and Im first in the queue! Mill Lane Garage in Kingsley Cheshire if anyone is interested.
I think pretty well all garages can do this, but it's not commonly done due to cheapness of disks. The little garage in Tarvin has the kit.

Honda suggest skimming disks as a service measure so I presume all their dealerships can do it.


DannyVTS

7,543 posts

183 months

Thursday 20th January 2011
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How much?

Mars

9,523 posts

229 months

Thursday 20th January 2011
quotequote all
vrooom said:
what the point of doing those. as seeing the disc are £30. unless you are skinflint.
Well, discs on my car are a bit more than that. However, new discs seemed to last only a short time before the friction hotspots returned. After they were skimmed, they lasted twice the distance before the symptoms returned again, and I only paid a nominal fee for the skimming.

Nothing wrong with this. Why would you pay more for new discs when you can do this?

rottie102

4,028 posts

199 months

Thursday 20th January 2011
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how the hell do they do it ON THE CAR?

Deva Link

26,934 posts

260 months

Thursday 20th January 2011
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rottie102 said:
how the hell do they do it ON THE CAR?
Search on YouTube.

rottie102

4,028 posts

199 months

Thursday 20th January 2011
quotequote all
Deva Link said:
rottie102 said:
how the hell do they do it ON THE CAR?
Search on YouTube.
Got it - thank you

Parrot of Doom

23,075 posts

249 months

Thursday 20th January 2011
quotequote all
I have at least two discs on my car that need correcting, and as four new discs isn't cheap this would be a good idea. I've toyed with the idea of taking the four discs to somewhere in Trafford Park, and finding a bloke with the right gear.

What will they be charging?

redtwin

7,518 posts

197 months

Thursday 20th January 2011
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Brake disc skimming was common practice 25 plus years ago. The easy availability of cheap replacement discs sort of killed it though. Haven't heard of disc skimming being offered as a service since the mid 90's...until now.

I remember going to a trade show with a friend and his Dad (who was a mechanic) and a tool company rep was demonstrating a machine that skimmed discs while still on the car. This was in 1988 so I don't remember the specifics of it (non-directional resurfacing?), but I remember the cost of the equipment was high enough for my friend's Dad to rubbish the rep and his demo as the time it took to remove the disc wasn't worth the higher cost of the machine.

Who could have imagined that 23 years later such a machine would have PHers queueing up!.

Ozzie Osmond

21,189 posts

261 months

Thursday 20th January 2011
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Forget the Mickey Mouse cure and get some new discs!

Deva Link

26,934 posts

260 months

Thursday 20th January 2011
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There's a short thread about it here: http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&a...

..and one of the posts has a link to a directory of garages with the kit.

Rubin215

2,084 posts

211 months

Thursday 20th January 2011
quotequote all
I just don't see it being worth while unless your discs are very expensive to start with.

And very expensive discs usually come off very expensive cars which tend to get used "enthusiastically."

And people who use their cars "enthusiastically" would normally just prefer new discs anyway...

At the other end of the market, your everday, run of the mill daily driver/family car is only going to cost £30 or so for a set of discs anyway, so why not just buy new?

DAVEVO9

3,469 posts

282 months

Thursday 20th January 2011
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Ozzie Osmond said:
Forget the Mickey Mouse cure and get some new discs!
^^^^^
This


If you had your discs skimmed I wonder if they would mic them up to see if they were still within tolerance?






NHK244V

3,358 posts

187 months

Friday 21st January 2011
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redtwin said:
Brake disc skimming was common practice 25 plus years ago. The easy availability of cheap replacement discs sort of killed it though. Haven't heard of disc skimming being offered as a service since the mid 90's...until now.

I remember going to a trade show with a friend and his Dad (who was a mechanic) and a tool company rep was demonstrating a machine that skimmed discs while still on the car. This was in 1988 so I don't remember the specifics of it (non-directional resurfacing?), but I remember the cost of the equipment was high enough for my friend's Dad to rubbish the rep and his demo as the time it took to remove the disc wasn't worth the higher cost of the machine.

Who could have imagined that 23 years later such a machine would have PHers queueing up!.
ditto
back when the only available replacments were factory ones it was common, not heard of it for years either.
I replace 30 or 40 discs a year, modern cars tend to use harder pads nowdays and the discs wear quicker than back in the day when a car would use a set of pads eevery 20k, it's not uncommon to change pads for the first time at 50k nowdays and discs at the same time usually.
Mind you most cars i see are low end motors where discs are £30 a pair so it's not a worry.