Mark: Hi, it's Mark from Remarkable Speaking. I'm here with Mr. Bernie Pawlik, Pawlik Automotive in Vancouver, Vancouver's best auto service experience. And we can say that cuz they've won best in Vancouver 24 times. Not necessarily in a row, but for a lot of years they've been voted by their customers as the best in Vancouver. And we're talking cars. How you doing Bernie?
Bernie: Doing well.
Mark: So today's victim is a 2014 Hyundai. I keep wanting to say Tucson, Tucson. What was happening with this vehicle?
Bernie: Yeah, it's hard to say that word, right. Yeah, so this vehicle came to our shop. The owner's complaint was that the brakes were making some noise when you apply the brakes. So that's why it came to our shop.
Mark: So when you hear a report from an owner like this, what's the kind of first step of diagnosing what's actually going?
Bernie: So the first thing we do is authorize a brake inspection from the customer because we're gonna need to road test the vehicle and inspect the brakes. So the first part of the procedure is to go for a road test. I actually looked at the vehicle myself. I drove it a long ways and I never heard any noise coming from the brakes. So that happens quite frequently. You know, there'll be a complaint of something and it won't happen. But we go to the next procedure of the test.
Mark: So what is the next step?
Bernie: The next step is to bring the vehicle into the shop, hoist it, remove the wheels, and do a good brake inspection. So we look at everything visually, measure the pads and rotors, and determine what's going on there. And that's where we did actually find some issues.
Mark: So what did you find?
Bernie: Yeah, so the front and rear brakes were worn out. The front's more than the rears, but you could see one edge of the front brake rotor where there was some abnormal wear, and that to me was probably where the scraping sound was coming from. But we also noted that the edges of the rotors had a lot of rust. We'll just get in some pictures and have a look at it.
So there's our Tucson, apologize I realize the picture's not exactly my sharpest work of photography.
So part of our doing our brake inspections, we actually measure the brake pads. In this case, this is the rear brake pad. It was hard to get a good visual on it, so we actually removed the brake caliper from the brake and measured it. There's four millimetres in the back brake, so technically not fully worn out, but getting pretty close. Four millimetres is, you know, maybe 20% remaining.
Next measurement of the front. So these are down to two millimetres, very thin, not very much brake pad material left. You can also see a bit of a rust. I'm moving my mouse point around here, so I can see, you can see a bit of a rusted edge here. This is not there on a new rotor, like when the rotors are new and in good shape, they don't have rust on those edges.
Closer view of the rear rotor. Again, you can see rusted edges inside and out.
And this is the rear rotor off. So we basically determined from doing this that it needed new brake pads and rotors front and rear. And this is the interesting part, this is the inside of the rear rotor, it looked bad on the other side, but not as bad as this. You can see there's a lot of rusted edge here. So there's not a lot of contact surface. This can cause noises.
And if you look at the brake pads, these are the pads that go along with that side of the brake, you can see again, I'm moving my mouse pointer around. You can see the edges. This is the inboard brake pad. You can see this sort of edge here is a little different than the other surface of the pad, so it is rubbing, but it's rubbing against a rusted surface as opposed to a nice, smooth metal surface, and it won't stop the vehicle as well.
Will you notice it? Not unless you're making a super, super severe stop. And I drove it. I mean the brakes actually felt fine. So these were definitely the cause of the noises. So brake pads and rotors is what we prescribed.
We look at other things like the brake hoses, the quality of the brake fluid. We did do a brake fluid flush because it had not been done in a few years or maybe never. The fluid was due for a flush and service. We look at brake lines, break hoses, see if there's anything rusted or corroded, inspect the caliper and we determined they were okay this time.
Mark: So is this sort of brake wear abnormal?
Bernie: No, it's pretty normal. I think the vehicle had about a hundred thousand kilometers, give or take, so I'm not certain whether these are the original brake pads or not. But yeah, this is kind of normal around where we live. If you lived in. Arizona, Tucson, for instance, you might never have those rusted edges because it doesn't rain much. If it snows there, it's an exceptionally rare event, there's no road salt.
We have road salt around here, not so bad. When you get vehicles that are from areas where they use a lot of road salt, these kind of rusted edge rotors and rusted services happen a lot worse. I'd say this is kind of normal wear for the age of the brakes.
Mark: And you mentioned the brake calipers were okay?
Bernie: Yeah, they're fine. I mean, calipers do need to be replaced from time to time. Most of the time they last at least two or three brake jobs. Some cars you'll never replace them, other vehicles, just like take Ford trucks for example, a lot of times by the time the brakes wear out the caliper for some reason they tend to seize up. They have like crappy dust seals that are torn and often need to be replaced.
So certain vehicles, you almost need to do calipers every brake job. Other vehicles, they're rare or never needed, or they only happen when you get really high mileage, like two, 300,000 Ks.
Mark: What does the brake caliper do? Is that the piston that pushes the pad into the disc?
Bernie: That's exactly what it is. And there's a variety of different styles of brake caliper. Some vehicles have only moving pistons. Others like on the Hyundai, they have two pistons on the front, one piston on the rear, but the pistons are on the inboard side pad. And then the caliper's sort of floats on some sliding pins, they're rubberized pins. And as the piston squeezes the inside pad, it also puts force on the outside pad and squeezes that together.
So we do service the calipers, when we do these. We clean all the rust and corrosion. We sandblast the caliper brackets to make sure there's no rust and corrosion because that does happen. I didn't have any pictures of that this time, but that's actually an extra thing we do at our shop that ensures the brakes last a long time.
Other vehicles, they'll have like four piston calipers where they'll have two pistons outside and inside, it works the same way, just a slightly different design.
Mark: And how are Hyundai Tucsons for reliability?
Bernie: Yeah, they're good. These are Hyundais that have that engine, you know, the exploding engine, well, not exploding, but engines that suddenly fail problems. So, you know, if you own one, be careful. You may have that issue. Nothing you can do about it. I mean, change your oil regularly. But it's sort of a design, Hyundai design flaw. And hopefully they've got it figured out by now. It doesn't happen on their EVs. Maybe they have other flaws we don't know about yet. So far they're good.
Mark: If you're looking for service for your Hyundai, all jokes aside, yes, the guys to see in Vancouver are Pawlik Automotive. You can reach them on their website, pawlikautomotive.com. You can book online or you can call them (604) 327-7112 to book your appointment. You have to book ahead. They're always busy. Pawlik Automotive in Vancouver, BC, Canada, and thanks so much for watching and listening. We appreciate it. Thanks, Bernie.
Bernie: Thank you, Mark, and thanks for watching.
