Brake Service

Brake service is one service that less than half of fast lubes offer, according to the 2009 National Oil & Lube News Fast Lube Operators Survey. Why this is could be for a number of reasons, but we spoke to two operators who have found success with the service.

“We do all kinds of brake work,” said Marty Hartwell, operator of Precision Tune Auto Care in Durham, North Carolina. “You name it, we do it.”

	Replacing brake pads and rotors like these can be a profitable add-on service for shops…provided they have trained technicians.

Hartwell said their brake jobs come from many different sources — from a tire job courtesy inspection, from a tire rotation courtesy inspection, customer complaints about noisy brakes or state inspections where brakes don’t pass, to name a few.

Another operator who performs all types of brake work is Jeremy O’Hora who operates both The Lube Center and Automotive Masters in Kerrville, Texas, and P.D.Q. Master Lube in Victoria, Texas.

“We do brake work on all cars, and it typically comes from customer requests,” said O’Hora, who is also an ASE Level 1 Master Certified Technician, a General Motors Master Certified Technician and a Chrysler Silver Level Certified Technician.

O’Hora shared the technical differences that operators should be aware of between European, American and Japanese vehicles. For starters, European cars such as Porsche, Mercedes, BMW, Saab and Fiat have soft rotors and soft pads, which is the reason they have incredible braking power — stopping an average of 30 to 40 feet faster than American and Japanese vehicles.

“When you do brake service on a European car, you must change the rotors and the pads at the same time,” O’Hora said. “Saab actually sells them as a kit. You can’t just buy a set of pads; it comes as a brake package. If you try to machine a European rotor, it will wave and chatter and you will ultimately destroy the rotor.

“A pad slap on a European car is not safe because the rotors will wear as much as a half inch on some of the 7-series BMWs. If you were to just put pads on there, eventually, you would wear through the metal, and a terrible accident could result.”

Most European cars have brake sensors that also need to be changed every time the pads are changed.

“All European cars built after 2002 have brake sensors, except for Saab and some of the entry-level 1- and 3-series BMWs,” O’Hora said. “The brake sensors must be replaced each time you change the pads because the sensor actually plugs into the pad. As the rotor comes in contact with the sensor as the pad wears, it illuminates a light on the dash that has three stages. The first stage means the brakes have about 2/32 left; the second stage means there is about 1/32 left; and when all three bars are lit on the instrument cluster, it means the brakes are metal-to-metal.”

American and Japanese cars are a whole different ballgame when it comes to brake service.

“The brake rotors on American and Japanese vehicles are hard as rocks,” O’Hora said. “That’s why you have to have really sharp tools when you cut the rotors and why you need to make sure you have zero runout.”

As far as the brake pads on these vehicles, O’Hora said the grades can vary, usually in accordance with what the customer can afford.

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