Brakes
We Maintain and Repair Disc and Drum Brakes
Professional Repair offers full brake repair services, anything from simple brake pad replacements to complex ABS diagnosis and repair. With Atlanta’s stop and go traffic, brake work is second only to oil changes in being the most frequent work we perform!
- Brake Pads or Shoe Replacement
- Brake Rotor or Brake Drum Replacement
- Brake System Flush
Brake Tutorial
Disc brakes have been around for over 50 years now and are standard on most cars for the front axle, at least. Many cars have disc brakes for front and rear axle. Yet many customers have little knowledge of how their disc brakes work. We hope to remedy that with the following primer on Disc Brakes. Your computer must support Flash plug-ins to play the animations.
We can divide the system into two parts, the mechanical system and the hydraulic system.
First let’s look at the hydraulic parts. Here is a simplified diagram.
We can divide the system into two parts, the mechanical system and the hydraulic system.
First let’s look at the hydraulic parts. Here is a simplified diagram.
When you press on the brake pedal you start to move a piston inside the Master Cylinder. This function is much like depressing the plunger on a syringe. As you press down you displace brake fluid inside the master cylinder through the brake lines into the brake calipers.
The caliper wraps around the brake disc. The displaced fluid from the master cylinder begins to fill cylinders inside the caliper causing the pistons inside the caliper to be pushed out. These pistons then push the brake pads into the brake rotor or disc. Because the disc is solidly attached to the axle it rotates with the tires. If you stop the disc from turning you will stop the tires from turning.
The animation above shows this process. The brake disc is not shown in this drawing for simplification. We will come back to that later when we examine the mechanical portion of the system.