I've been overhauling my brakes this week and already finished installing the new MC, speed bleeders and new front calipers in the fall.

I'm now on the rotors and managed to get the screws out w/o a prob and already have the passenger side one off and the new one on, that went easy.

The driver's on the other hand is kicking my ***. I've been hammering on the back side so long my dead blow is loosing all it's rubber. I've also cooked it with the torch and sprayed it down with PBBlaster.

I'm running out of ideas and would like to get the car back on the ground tonight, any ideas?

 

Are you going to be "saving" these rotors? If not, then just beat the crap out of them with a big hammer. If you're planning on saving them, then you can smash on them from the front (just not on the actual disk). You'll need something more than just a dead-blow hammer to get 'em off if they're really stuck on there. But yeah, you have the right idea I suppose. Heat, lube and 'impact'.

 

These rotors are past the wear limit, so they're gone. I'm going to stop by the rental shop and grab a sledge. The only thing I'm worried about is ******* up the bearings or something else aside from the rotor.

 

I had this problem with the rotors on my mom's Focus welding to the hubs (I hate Fords). But anyways, the solution was a two (or three)-jaw puller... brace it on the hub, wrap it around the rotors and start twisting with your ratchet wrench. I highly advise against being directly behind it because the amount of force the puller exerts is rather ridiculous and the rotor can fly off pretty speedy-like.

If you don't have one of these in your inventory you can rent one from pep boys (or autozone probably).

 

been there, done that. a few pointers:

- try hitting it from the FRONT of the rotor. might seem counter-intuitive, but it actually works
- torch doesn't really work
- took the whole hub/disc off the car and sent it to a local shop...they tried taking it off with a hydraulic press, so that didn't work. eventually they just had to cut it off...yes, they cut the ROTOR OFF THE HUB, hahaa. and actually they only charged me like $20.

 

impact screwdriver!!

 

Holy ****, I'd love to see that. I'm hoping I don't have to go down this road but I may because this side is very, very worn. I'm wondering if these are the original rotors. It's worn so much in the back that the inner lip and braking surface is actually caving in because it's corroded so much on the inside and gotton so thin.

 

Heres something I learned when trying to big big disk brakes off. Ease the car down onto the caliper slowly. There should be enough room between the stud and the rotor for it to move and break loose. But go slow. I seared studs off of a semi when i got frustrated and just let it drop(1" studs are expensive to replace.lol)

 

Hehe, that sounds like a recipe for destruction. Do you guys ever bother with the set screws BTW? On my other cars I usually just use a couple of lug nuts on opposite sides to snug it to the hub, put the caliper on and then the wheel. I really don't feel like huffing it to the hardware store today.

 

If it comes off it goes back on. THey must have put them ther for a reason.

But like I said if you go slow you use the wieght of the car to break it lose. Ive only tried it on semis(ya for air disks brakes makes everyone safer).

 

Dammit, you sound just like my conscience.

 

i get that alot

 

yeah, like stated above, if your in no need to save these rotors, beat the living **** out of them with a metal hammer....

thats what my dad does....

 

You need a BFH (big freaking hammer) and some heat. Get the rotors red hot and then pound on them from the back. Obviously this can be dangerous so be careful. The bearings are designed to take heat and pounding so don't be too worried but for the minimal cost and effort you should be replacing or repacking the bearings at every major brake job anyway.

The worst case is that you have to pull the hub and press off the rotor.

Slather the back of the new rotor in anti-seize so this doesn't happen again.

 

I've tried all of the above aside from pull them completely and re-press.

I just got back and bought an 8" puller and the biggest handheld sledge I could find and expect to fit under there and went to town.

The hammer did nothing except knock more **** out from the inside of the rotors and the puller didn't do much better. I had it tightened so much that it bent the cunk of angle iron I had running across the hub and then broke off three nice chunks of rotor on the edge where the arms were.

I hammered some more, cooked it some more, put more PBBLaster on and it's still stuck.

What kind of shop should I bring it to? Would your normal autmotive shop like a Midas, Carx (just trying to think of the ones that are nearby) be able to press it out?

 

I had a the same problem on my old gxl beater. Finally got them off with both a torch and press. Take the hubs off and place the rotor hub in the press and start applying pressure, then bust out the torch and heat the rotor evenly. No need to get them red hot but hot enough that the PBblaster starts burning off. On mine, they broke loose and came half way off after the first heating, then I had to apply more heat and pressure to remove them completely.

Good luck.

 

When you do get them off, you don't need to put the screws back in if they're messed up, they're there for assembly purposes.

 

I told you to ask me if you needed help . I have it all at my disposal dood and I've ripped off shitty rotors before. Now I'm back in Bemdiji.

Anyways, I use heat and the biggest ******* hammer I can find. Or just a regular hammer. I hit in between each stud in a circular fashion until it's off. Easy peasy.

Good luck yo, reppin MN!

PS: What are you upgrading too?

 

^^^ Hehe, I thought about getting a hold of you this morning actually but ended up taking to this place down the street (http://www.metricautoworks.com/Flash.htm) and they pressed the hub out and even removed one of the set screws that had broken off inside the hub and cleaned the threads for $10 I always drive by 'em when doing jobs in that area and they always have something fun parked out front. Oh yeah, it took 15 TONS of pressure to seperate them... don't think my pullers would've done the trick had they not took a chunk of the rotor with them.

I'm not really upgrading either, I'm just replacing things that I've noticed aren't in the best shape. Check out how fucked up this rotor was:

 

Awwwe ****!

That rotor looks pretty bad . I'm happy you got it taken care of though, that would of been a bitch to do in the garage .

 

Yeah, I flipped that puppy over and did a . When I replaced the calipers in the fall I should've seen that but it didn't get fixed until the brakes started pulsating. Now they're way better, very smooth stops and it stops hard again.

 

i seen worse rotors, so bad that i hammered until the disk seperated from the hat, and then i had to cut it into a pizza and it fell apart with some more hammering... i wish i had pictures but i had 4 peices of the hat, and about 7 of the disk.... it was pretty good stress reliever though... hammering the shid out of metal... lol

 

wow, good job. like i said, 10 tons of pressure couldn't even take my rotors off. maybe 15 tons would have done it? haha.

Aaron Cake said some things i forgot to mention. should be kind of common sense, but i will repeat again:
- repack bearings with new grease
- put anti-sieze all over the back of the rotor, where it meets the hub face. get the good stuff that can stand heat...it's not cheap, but $10 is a lot better than having to deal with this again

oh, as for the screws, they were really only put there to speed up assembly-line processing. you don't really need them, but they help to keep the rotor in place until you get the caliper and wheel on.

 

Sounds like the same problem I ran into the first time I did my rotors. The hammer didn't work, neither did the torch work. Finally I gave up and had the car towed to the shop as I needed to get to work. They pulled the hubs and pressed off the rotor after cutting it into 4 "pie sections" with a cutting wheel.

 

wow, and I tought my rotors where hard to get off. All I did was drilling the heads of the screws and using a sledgehammer for like 20minutes. Makes me feel lucky reading this.