Brake Squeal - What is it and why does it happen?

Alright folks, let's talk about the price of brake replacements, the parts required, and why. 

When your brakes are worn and it's time for replacement and your estimate includes brake rotors, there's a good reason.  When we install brake parts on a vehicle, brake pads and rotors wear together. They also wear grooves into each other. When you replace brakes, pads and rotors should start with flat surfaces so that they can wear with each other. So, when you replace brake pads but not brake rotors, you have a flat pads surface, but a grooved rotor surface.

What happens is, as the brakes are applied, the surface is burned off. That's the black dust that is always a pain and causes you to clean your wheels so much. Well, that black dust settles in the grooves of the brake rotor. As you use your brakes, there is a tremendous amount of heat because of the friction. The dust actually melts in those grooves causing what's known as “glazing” on the brake rotor and that, my friends, is causing your brake squeal.

Now, the squeal does not affect the function of your brakes in any way, it’s just embarrassing. It used to be that you had a choice, new brake rotors, or having your old rotors turned or resurfaced. As far as Mercedes and BMW go, in an effort to gain mileage, they lighten the vehicle in all kinds of ways, and this includes making brake rotors thinner so they can no longer be turned (or resurfaced) and doing so would put the brake rotor under the minimum specification for thickness.

So, when it’s time for new brakes, remember that doing the service properly will keep you and your car happy with lasting performance. You’ll need pads AND rotors, and possibly sensors if your car requires it. If you’re unsure of what your car may need and you drive a European import, drive on in to European AutoSpecialist and let us evaluate your car’s needs.

Air Conditioning Season

It's that time of year again - Air Conditioning [A/C] Season! You may ask, "James, what does that mean to me?"

I’d like to explain a little about how A/C Systems work.

A/C systems are what mechanics call a closed system, so theoretically, in a perfect world, once the system is charged with Freon, you should never need to worry about it. In a perfect world. Unfortunately, our world is far from perfect.

I see a lot of shops advertising A/C Service for a fixed rate. If your A/C is working, don’t worry about it. If your A/C doesn’t work, or seems to work intermittently, that a different story.

If your A/C is weak, it’s more than likely low on Freon. And it’s not a matter of “just topping it off”.

Back in the late 80’s, when the government decided that R12 Freon was bad for the ozone (a whole other argument unto itself), they mandated that automotive shops could not vent Freon into the atmosphere, so, if your A/C is weak, we have to check the system for leaks. If there is a leak, we’re not supposed to top off the system. A leak in an A/C system is basically the same as venting Freon into the atmosphere, and a repair will have to be made. Now, that’s not to say that if your A/C is weak that you have a problem that will require repair. Over the winter time and a couple of years, you could very slowly lose a bit of Freon, in this case, “topping it off” or servicing your system is all that’s needed. This is true for the majority of cars on the road.

If you own a BMW or a Mini, there could be one other little thing that gets overlooked quite a bit. Underneath the front bumper are some panels called closure panels. Generally in the right side closure panel is the exterior temp sensor. We see a large number of vehicle with the closure panels and temp sensor broken off and missing, and mostly from pulling to far forward at parking blocks. Cars go over the parking block OK, but they don’t back over them very well. BMWs and Minis use this ambient temp sensor when regulating the temperature on the inside of the vehicle. If the ambient temp sensor is missing, the computer default is negative 40*F. So lets say it’s 95*F outside and you turn you’re A/C on the first thing the car does is check to see the temperature outside so it knows how cold to make it inside. If the temp sensor is missing, the car see -40*F and it thinks that your crazy wanting A/C with it so cold outside, so to you, you’re A/C doesn’t seem to be blowing very cold...and that's because it’s not.

Now, a word of warning to anybody needing A/C repairs. I don’t care want kind of car you drive...BMW, Toyota, Ford, doesn’t matter, A/C repairs are expensive, and it’s not all your repair facility's or manufacturers’ fault. A lot of the expense has come about from Government regulations. Yeah, the parts are expensive, but I’ll bet most of that cost can be traced back to regulations on Freon.

That being said, know that we at European Autospecialist strive to offer you the best pricing combined with the best service, so you know that you're getting the best "bang" for your buck when you have your import serviced with us. It's been a pleasure as always, and remember - Stay cool!

Stories from the Shop, or As The Wrench Turns 2

An interesting thought hit me; something I’m sure won’t cross the minds of most people.

We all know about the tragic disaster recently fallen upon Japan. Just the Earthquake alone will take years to recover from!

We had a customer in the other day with a late model BMW. He had a question about the electronic display on his radio. The display uses little blocks to create the words and numbers. After a while, some of these blocks burn out. After enough of the blocks quit working…well, you just can’t read anything anymore. It looks like the car is trying to speak to you in Klingon. We call it pixelizing.

I really didn’t think too much about it; it’s not uncommon. In fact, it’s something we’ve been dealing with since the early ’90s with the first LED Instrument Clusters.

I called a distributor and inquired about the price and availability of the part.

I wasn’t real surprised at the answer I got from the dealer. I called the customer and reported back with the pricing. Once again, I wasn’t real surprised at the customer’s reaction. The replacement radio was going to set the customer back about $800.00. The customer asked about the possibility of getting a salvage unit from an auto salvager. Ok, fair question … once upon a time.

In today’s vehicle, almost any of the many electrical/computer components are programmed to the car they’re installed in. The replacement units from the factory come with no information in them. Just like buying a hard drive for your home computer, blank. So with that option out of the question, I told him there is one other option. I could remove the radio and send it to California where they would repair his radio. The drawback to this option is the fact that between shipping it back and forth, and the repair time, he’ll probably have a hole in his dash for about 2 weeks.

(Now that you’ve got the background, here’s where it all ties together.)

I called the repair facility in California to get an estimate time and cost of repair. I was told, “Oh, yeah, we do those all the time, BUT, the circuit boards come from Alpine.”

I’m thinking, “Yeah, OK, so?”

“Alpine ….. Japan. We ran out of the circuit boards last week, shipments are on back-order, with no estimated release date.”

You know, I hadn’t thought of that. How much of the devastation in Japan is going to start impacting everyone in everyday life? True, the world has gotten smaller. We are an electronically addicted society. And how much of all the electronics that we use come from Japan? And how many repair parts for things are made and shipped from Japan? I am now interested to see how this will effect all of us in the coming months. There are so many of us that expect instant gratification. I wonder how many will want some electrical component repaired and when told it may take months to get the parts say, forget it, I’ll just go buy a new one …oh wait, those come from the same place, you can’t get a new one any faster.

Anyway, back to my customer… our final decision, find a radio station he like and leave it there. Listen to CD’s, or his iPod/MP3 player, we’ll worry about reading the display next year!