Rotor & pad contact
 

Today I removed my front wheels for the first time since I bought my car 3 weeks ago, and gave a good look around.
I was surprised when trying to rotate the rotor, it won't do a full rotation without touching the pads at one point.
Is that the way it's supposed to do?
I did have the hand brake on, but it's only acting on rear wheels right?
Also the brake pads looks pretty new...
Thanks :)

does the steering wheel shake when you step on the brakes ? you will use a torque wrench on the bolts right ?

You should be able to spin the rotor freely with the wheels off (and handbrake off if it's the rear).

Does it always stop or rub at one spot?

yes hand brake works on rears only. Soudns liek your front...
 

...rotors have a slight warp which means that they contact the pads at one location as they spin. Ber in mind nothing is perfect. Incidentally, the hand brake operates on a separate set of DRUM shoes inside the rear rotor - it does not apply the discs at all.

If oyu dont feel a vibration when braking, i would not worry about it. If you do, you have found your problem.

Grant

Thanks all for the answers.

No vibrations when I brake, but I sometimes feel small vibrations in the steering wheels, that's why I took the wheels off in the first place. But coudln't see anything wrong, I think it's simply the wheels than need a balance.

And yes, using a torque wrench ;)

If you have vibrations in the wheel at speed when you're not applying the brakes, you need to have your wheels balanced. You may want to find a shop that does road force balancing since our cars wear unevenly - especially on the rears.

Be sure to get road force balancing on the tires and wheels, which means they have a Hunter 9700 series machine and they're willing to knock the rubber off the rim and move the heaviest part of the rubber to the lightest part of the rim to get it as balanced as it can be, not just put weights on the rim for you.

Really hard braking on our cars does move the tires around the rim in tiny increments over and over and they do move without breaking the bead.

Thanks for the additional tips, I'll make sure to find a place where they have the correct machine to balance the wheels ;)

special equipment is not required to align the high spot of the tire runout with the lowspot of the wheel runout, A motivated, experienced installer is required.

If the tire really moved in relation to the wheel why waste time & money "roadforce balancing" ? :rolleyes:

My tires wear perfectly even on the rear! Fronts depend on track usage.