Changing the rear rotors on my Acura 1.7EL
Tuesday, April 3rd, 2007
There isn’t much that distinguishes my car from a Honda Civic, but the rear disc brakes is one thing (well, technically two things) that distinguish my car from the average 2001 Civic. At 117,225 Km my rear rotors were covered with rust and made a grinding noise during low speed breaking. I decided that this spring when I changed my snow tires for summer tires a full brake job was in order, but that’s not cheap and I’m saving for a wedding. Thus I decided to do this myself, I have a Honda Civic Haynes’ Guide (apparently the US version had 4 wheel discs) and there are very few complications to the procedure – except rust!
What I wanted to blog about was the parts themselves. Acura had the rotors in stock and were willing to sell them to me – for $160 each! I checked with Canadian Tire and they didn’t have rear rotors for the Acura EL or the Canadian made Honda Civic, but they did have rear rotors for the Swindon UK build Civic SIR for $19.00! This got me curious.
I criss-crossed St. Catharines and found Motorcade Auto Parts – they were very apologetic that they only had their “Premium” rotors in stock at $88.57 a piece – compared to $160 from Acura I was very happy. That’s the main reason why I wanted to make this blog posting, the rotors are Motorcade part AIM 31406 – don’t buy the Acura rotors!
Canadian Tire had break pads for the EL, I opted for the Monroe ceramics given that I was going to “save” the four hours of labour I splurged for high-end pads – the pads were about $80 for each end (front and rear).
