My 2006 Cobalt SS started shaking when applying the brakes about 6 months ago. At first the steering wheel was shaking, but now the entire car shakes. The brakes work find, it's just very annoying.

My mechanic checked the disks for warping, and he said they were warped 3000s of an inch, or something like that, which apparently is normal. He said that the ceramic brake pads are tough on the rotors, and that's what's probably causing the shaking.

Should he change the disks and then get new semi-metallic brakes, or just buy new ceramic pads?

 

Mine does the same thing, warped rotors do it alot, Another cause of warped rotors is improper (over) torqueing the wheel lugs (100 ft lbs is correct) I would reccomend waiting until your pads wear down, then swap out new pads/rotors. Don't know about ceramic vs semi-metallic though.....

But ya, thats what Im doing about mine,
when my front pads wear down, then Ill swap out my rotor/pads all in one go.

 

Please explain this in great detail.

The rotor sits against a flat hub. If you tighten it too much how will that affect the surface the pads touch? Lug studs would snap before you could distort a rotor all the way to the outside. If the hub wasn't an even surface your theory would make sense. 99.9% of shops run lugs on with 1/2" impacts that put out way more torque than 100 ftlbs. and have no problems.

 

get a wheel alignment

 

I may be wrong, but wouldn't the wheels being out of alignment cause it to shake more then just under breaking? Like at 60+ speeds?

 

Hey guys, thanks for all your help. My wheels got aligned 2 weeks ago when I took the snow tires off, and the car shakes when I press the brakes at any speed, even 15 km/h. It's been ongoing for 6 months now, and it's only getting worse and worse.

I got the car a year and a half ago, it was on a lease before, and I'm pretty sure the guy before me used it pretty rough given that he wore out the brake pads at 25,000 km.

If anyone has any more suggestions, I'll greatly appreciate it. I'm going to go to the tire shop tomorrow and ask them to check the alignment of the wheels again.

Thanks a lot

 

alignment has nothing to do with your wheels shaking. If they are shaking when you apply the brakes only you got warped rotors. Deal with it, or if you don't like it replace your rotors.

 

Warped rotors, remove/replace...problem solved

 

The hubs may be out of spec... i know the ones on my G5 were, and it was causing similiar issues.

 

... just get new Drilled and slotted rotors on ebay! they will last way longer, and that is the cause of ur vibrations when u hit the brakes. period

 

its gotta be the rotors man...replace em. same thing happen to my moms car