This made my F&*(&#G day!!!! LMFAO!

 

It all depends on where you are locally. For a female, yeah, I can honestly see 4 dealerships. I've been "banned" at 3. The one where they took my car for a test drive, one where they did the bait and switch work, and the one where they wrote up a work order for new shocks and struts and left the old ones on. Oh and I've been banned at 2 different Pep Boys locations because I called them out on damaging my car - once accidentally (curbed the rim) and twice purposely to try and force me to pay for GROSSLY inflated repairs. (Note to dishonest Pep Boys' everywhere - it is REALLY obvious when you take a sledgehammer to someone's hub assembly. It's also probably a good idea to not stereotype who is too "stupid" to realize that you're charging $750 to replace a $115 part that can be changed in 20 minutes in your own driveway.....)

If you want hilarity - have a camera on hand for the look on the face of the service manager when you show him where you marked the old parts with a grease pen in an obscure location to be sure that they were replaced.

I've been to at least 15-20 different dealerships since I've owned cars. You know how many I ACTUALLY trust to do work on my car if they absolutely had to? (I don't generally go to dealers once the warranty is up.) 2, and one of those is owned by my family.

This is standard operating procedure for performance brakes, especially out of the Ferodos.

My first suggestion would be to take it to the dealer and have them check it over to make sure you don't have something wrong with the brakes. If it really is 2-3 seconds then it's worth checking out.

Second suggestion is to go out to an empty parking lot in heavy rain and just dick around with different things to "learn" the brakes and what it takes to make them perform the way you want in the wet.

Third suggestion, if you're THAT unhappy with it, buy new pads and rotors.

I don't know what other answer you want. This is something that comes with the territory of having a performance car with performance-oriented parts.

 

see you only told 1 story out of the 4 bans... damn well see now it becomes more clearer.. thats some f'd up ****. See woman are sneaky so I never under estimate them, that stereotype is a horrible one to have these days as women arent locked in the house like they used to be in the old days..

 

It's WORSE right now because of the economy believe it or not. Most places would rather try and squeeze money out of whoever they can than lose a customer who knows their **** and keeps them on their toes.

The most recent at Pep Boys was the most epic. Busy weekend, they failed my car for inspection for a "broken wheel hub".....not knowing I had JUST swapped on my new tires, had all 4 wheels off THAT MORNING, and checked every single one of them. I stood there FUMING over it and I just happened to overhear them telling a little Asian guy who spoke little to no English the same thing, and while I was waiting in the waiting room they came over and told another woman the same thing about her car. I incited a small angry mob because I went to each and every one of them and explained what was going on.

Sure enough on the old hub, you could see where they'd hit it with what looked like a sledge to break 2 of the studs.

 

Thank u alleycat for not treating me like i cant just drive

its cool nvibe, i get caught in the moment too helps work go by lol!

 

if its raining though and you push hard on the brakes dont they stop fast?

 

That might be iffy. I think it's a driving style thing, honestly. SO much of how someone drives is subconscious. Usually for wet, like standing water almost, braking, I usually go about halfway down, let out, then right back in hard on the brakes and that usually gets enough water off to get good bite on the rotors.

One other question I'm kind of wondering about now too - when you're hard on the brakes and you say they don't kick in for a few seconds - is the ABS not coming on?

 

Seriously, it doesnt matter the pressure, speed etc. It's happened on the highway coming to the toll and on a backroad. They just do not like heavy rain for some reason

 

What about the ABS? Any action from that while the car is "not braking"?

Like I said, you cannot keep water off the braking surface, and what makes brakes "work" effectively is a layer of material that acts like grease. If you've ever pushed the car hard even on a mountain road or in heavy traffic and then gotten out and looked at the rotors, they're most likely "glazed" and you can actually see the bluish-purplish film on them (and it looks kind of like an oil stain you'd see on pavement).

You can imagine what water does to a surface like that....and add in the fact that the tires aren't glued to the road like when it's dry and it's definitely hairy. Usually a little half second tap of light to medium pressure will "squeegee" the rotor surface and take the water off (in this case the water will bead on top of the film and act like a lubricant and decrease the friction between pad and rotor) and then let off and get back on hard will help.

It's funny to go to a road course on a rainy day because there will be at least a 20 minute lecture from the instructors for how to drive your car home from the track for noobs.

 

How heavy of rain? Because you have to think about it. First, brakes operate on heat, and water dissipates heat very well. Second, water will act as a lubricant, and mixed with the film of stuff that turns into an oily substance when it gets mixed with water, would not help the cause. Maybe you should drive a bit more cautiously in heavy rain, like i suggested before, or go get it checked out.

 

But why only this car? I've owned 7 new cars and a **** ton of used hunks of ****. The hunks of **** had better manners in the rain!

 

Because they're not run of the mill brakes. Every pad and rotor combination beds differently and the properties of the film that forms on the rotor varies from setup to setup. My Hawk/Raybestos combination performs differently in the rain than the stock SS/SC setup did, which handed differently than the OE setup on my Cavalier.

If I putz around town in a heavy rain, my brakes are pretty tame. If I get caught in a heavy rainstorm on the way home from a track day.......there've been times where I just pulled off at a rest area and gotten a bite to eat because there's no way in hell I know my brakes would be able to stop after a hard day of track driving with water on top of the rotors (plus the whole cold water on hot metal thing is no bueno either).

 

damn 62 post.......................I know mine not a real SS but if GM is gonna put the SS badge on it why not put better brakes on it. But whatever im going to get all brand new rotors and pads so i don't have to deal with this **** anymore.

 

GM doesn't put better brakes on the car because if they put racing pads on the cars, they will wear out faster, make more noise, more dust, and aren't optimal for daily use. If they put them on the 90% of the people that bought these cars as a nice daily driver will be on this forum and at the dealer whining about all of these issues. They need to dumb it down to the lowest common denominator.

 

so true.

 

Yeah I upgraded from the 2.4 and the TC Brembos dust like mad crazy.

 

Jeez. The SS/TC wheels must get black in like 10 miles because mine are TERRIBLE for dusting up. usually 3 days after I wash it the front rims are already gray from the brake dust...

 

You know in the Simpsons when homer turns away from the mirror after shaving and immediately has a shadow?

...That's the SS/TC's wheels with respect to washing.

 

Learn how to drive. As many others have said, stopping distance and the way the brakes react in the wet will be different to how they react and stop in dry conditions.

If it persists, then get it checked out of course.

 

Hehe I love that pic. But seriously, it reflects how I feel... That's insane.