can anyone help with deglazing your own drums and rotors?

When you "turn" rotors or machine them on a lathe you lose a considerable amount of metal from that rotor to get them "true" that mass that you lose also hinders the ability to dissipate heat, if you cant get rid of the heat the rotor will warp giving you that brake pulsation, so...... all you get are complaints that "ever since you turned my rotors my brakes pulsate" so nobody turns rotors anymore. That and its $10 more for new so its not worth it

 

People keep offering to haul my scrap away Then they never follow through..

At my part time job every thing gets tossed in the dumpster City people throw everything in the garbage .

 

The pad composition nowadays is semi-met., it wears rotors as much as pads every time you stop. Add that the rotors are built to barely above minimum thickness from the factory to save every bit of weight and you get a rotor that is already too thin when the pads are worn. That's what shops have told me, they're just not worth it.
Yes, you can deglaze them with a grinder and a flat tiger disc type sand paper wheel but it's dicey....and they're already worn thin to begin with.

(I've done it to flywheels and rotors in an emergency when it was just someone who was just trying to get a work car or truck back on the road when the burn was bad and usually some type of oil or fluid was added to the mix. YMMV.)

As far as new rotors....I think they're ALL made in China now...Brembo, Toyo, ....all of them. These trucks are 10 years old at the newest and not much money is made in parts anymore. Whole 'nother topic though.

 

yep, same here, we put scrap out by the road and it takes about a week but some junk guy will come by and pick it up.

I asked him once what scrap iron is worth and he said he gets an average of about $40 for every full trailer which is about 500-600 lbs of steel so when you figure time, gas, and labor to do it, plus a helper to load and unload, it hardly pays to do it but since he picks it up for free its worth it to make spare beer money

 

ok well I did my rear brakes and the drums came out great after I used this: http://www.homedepot.com/p/Avanti-P...ount-Quick-Strip-Disc-PNW040100D01G/202830913 it looks like a sponge but its hard and has abrasive stuff on it like it was dipped in something. its for a grinder but I just used it with my regular drill.

it took the glaze right off in seconds without "removing" much if any metal and then I went behind it with 240 grit sand paper and it came out looking great with a rough deglazed surface yet little to no metal dust was removed. most of what came off was just black brake pad dust

I will do the same for the rotors when I do the front brakes

update: as it turns out the front brakes are perfectly fine so the previous owner must have had them done. they have a solid 1/4" of pad thickness left and no signs of grooving of any kind but the rotors while perfectly good, seamed thinner then oem. it must be some aftermarkets he put on it because I know the oem stock rotors I changed out on my 99 5 lugger are nice and thick.

 

this is a follow up review of what happened.

after deglazing the drums and making fine surface scratches, I thought it would work fine with the new pads but even after driving a couple of thousand miles on them the rear brakes just don't have the grab they should have and will slip if put in gear with parking brake on. it has drag but its definitely not holding the truck securely and if I parked on incline, im sure the truck would move if pushed.

so the end result of this review is you cant do anything with used rotors or drums but replace them with new ones and the abrasive I used was good at cleaning up the drums and making them look shiny and new with fine scratches, but in the end these scratches were still too smooth to provide enough friction for the brakes to work properly. maybe its because the rear brake are not under a lot of pressure so they simply cant "bed in" unless you start with a rough drum surface but whatever the reason, deglazing with a abrasive disk did not work.

I am ordering a set if rear drums to put on the truck and will just have to turn the old ones into scrap metal.

hope this helps someone else who might be trying to save their old rotors or drums, if you are, all you can do is get them turned if they still do that where you are (very few places still do this) or just buy new ones.

 

That's good follow-up. I've always wondered about resurfacing drums oneself. Now I know...