Brake Repair in Colorado Springs, CO

This is the symptom worth recognizing, because it is the one people drive away from and forget about.

Partway down a long descent the pedal starts travelling further than it should and the braking feels distant. Reach the bottom, the brakes cool, and by the next morning everything is normal. Nothing appears broken, so nothing gets reported.

What happened was heat. Brakes convert movement into heat, and on a sustained descent they can produce more of it than they can shed. Once components and fluid get hot enough, the pedal goes long and stopping distance grows at the moment you want it least.

Two separate things to take from that.

The driving part. Hold the vehicle back with a lower gear rather than with continuous light braking, and use firm intermittent applications instead. Continuous dragging is what builds heat.

The repair part. A vehicle that does that easily is telling you something about its condition. Fluid that has absorbed moisture over the years boils at a lower temperature than new fluid, and a vehicle whose brake fluid has never been changed has less margin than it left the factory with.

Mention it when you book, even if it has stopped doing it.

Pads, rotors, calipers, hardware, hoses and fluid, as a system rather than as the noisy part. Fluid condition is checked rather than assumed, which matters more on this terrain than on flat ground.

A rotor that is thin, grooved or distorted should be replaced rather than having new pads fitted against it. A seized caliper slide produces uneven pad wear across an axle.

On ice or wet pavement the limit is grip rather than braking force. New pads on worn tires do not shorten a stop.

The store carries all nine Purcell tire categories and can measure tread while the vehicle is in. See tire and wheel balancing.

The Colorado Springs store runs sixteen services, opens at 7:00 AM, and is managed by Tyler Campbell.

See the national brake repair page for all 33 locations.