Dirty wheels

[Biba <biba@domain.elided>]

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Timothy Rodgers writes:
My daughter has a New Beetle--and the wheels are always filthy with a
black
powder.  I thought that this was from brake pad dust and would just go
away
as time went on.  The car has 6000 miles on it now and the problem
continues.  Have I got the right diagnosis?  Can anything be done about
it?
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This has probably been covered before in The Digest, however...

No, the black dust won't go away. It is not just a situation of the pads
bedding in. True, there might have been a somewhat greater amount of
dust for the first few hundred miles (depending on how aggressively your
daughter uses the brakes). I believe it was during the 70's that the
government mandated (as they were so prone to do in that era) that an
automobile should stop within a certain distance with a fairly minimal
amount of foot pounds of pressure.

The manufacturers work-around was to install brake pads with softer
compounds, but (I'm assuming here) with greater coefficients of
friction. The alternative would be to design / install considerably more
expensive calipers and larger, vented rotors.

The two downsides of the softer material is the dusting problem and the
fact they wear very quickly. On the positive side, let's imagine your
daughter is very petite - they could easily save her life in a panic
situation.

If it was my daughter and once again assuming she washes her own car,
I'd buy her the least caustic wheel cleaner I could find and show her
where the light on the dash is indicating it's time for new pads.

One last thought. As pads wear, the fluid in the brake reservoir goes
down. If you add to it, don't forget to remove some of the fluid before
changing pads or else it might go shooting all over the engine as the
wheel cylinders are spread apart for the new (thicker) pads. And yes,
I'm sure it's under warranty and this will be the dealers job to do.

Biba
Irwindale CA
AlfaCyberSite http://home.earthlink.net/~biba/
(check out the Cibie light pages)

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End of alfa-digest V7 #565
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