2003 Accord Brake Problems

I have a 2003 Accord V-6, manual transmission, that just turned over 30,000
miles, and the brakes are terrible. I am taking it in next week for rotor
work, and this will be the third time the rotors have been machined. And, to
add insult to injury, I have to pay for it. Honda says they will only
machine them twice under warranty. Plus, the lights in my radio went out,
and the passenger side door luck is not working. This is my fourth Honda,
and I have never had this kind of bad luck before. I hope this is not the
beginning of more problems.

Steve

Steve Hawkins wrote:
> I have a 2003 Accord V-6, manual transmission, that just turned over 30,000
> miles, and the brakes are terrible. I am taking it in next week for rotor
> work, and this will be the third time the rotors have been machined. And, to
> add insult to injury, I have to pay for it. Honda says they will only
> machine them twice under warranty.

suggest you try a different shop. seriously. i've been to places where
the car's fine before it goes in, and comes out with brakes shuddering
like sob's. all they did was remove wheels for a visual inspection.
the reason for the problem is that the hub & rotor assembly on the honda
is relatively light weight [a good thing], but it means it can
elastically distort if the wheel's not fitted right. when the wheel is
re-attached, it needs to be torqued in a two-stage [or more] process,
1324, 1324 for bolt sequence, with the wheel off the ground for at least
the first torque stage. in my case, simply removing & re-torquing the
wheels makes the problem disappear again, but this may not happen for
you because if the disks have already been machined twice, they're
getting thin and are much more likely to have alignment errors each time
they go to the cutting machine.

for the future, do /not/ allow anyone to machine your disks unless
they're badly scored, especially not for a 30k mile car. it simply
shows they're "one remedy cures all" thinkers that don't know what
they're doing. if the disks /do/ need machining, consider replacement
instead. online, good quality brembo disks are about $50 each. go to
tegger.com and check out his excellent guide on how to do this simple
job yourself. or find a good independent honda specialist.

> Plus, the lights in my radio went out,
> and the passenger side door luck is not working. This is my fourth Honda,
> and I have never had this kind of bad luck before. I hope this is not the
> beginning of more problems.
>
> Steve
>
>