4 Useful Brake Maintenance Tips You Should Know About

Owning your own car has its own sets of responsibilities — including keeping every aspect of it well-maintained. And one of those areas that you should often check is your braking system.

Your car’s braking system may seem complicated at first. But once you know the basics of maintaining it, you’ll be surprised how easy you can do it by yourself.

Ready to dig in? Here are 4 useful tips to help you keep your car’s braking system in good condition:

How to Protect Your Car’s Braking System

Do Regular Inspections

As mentioned, it’s always important to do regular inspections on your car — which includes your car’s braking system. There’s actually several things to check: uneven pad wear, caliper rust, scratches on the rotor, and any other possible issues.

Doing regular inspections are imperative particularly for the brake pads and rotors. Both of them deteriorate more easily compared to other elements in your braking system. If you see any defects, bring your car to an auto shop immediately and have them replaced or repaired.

Change Your Brake Fluid Regularly

Another thing to inspect is your brake fluids — which are essential for your brake pads to function properly. You should check them regularly (preferably every 25,000 miles) and replace them when necessary.

There are two steps to know whether your brake fluids need to be replaced. First, if the fluid is not on the appropriate level, and if the fluid has a milky color (which means that moisture has got into it).

Be a Responsible Driver

Being a responsible driver does just keep you safe on the road. It also helps in keeping your car in tip-top condition, including it’s braking system.

How is that possible? Well, if you are often driving irresponsibly and always speeding up your car, this just means that brakes are more likely to be used excessively (also known as heavy braking).

This has a great impact on your brake’s life span — which means you will be needing to replace it earlier than normal.

Keep the Car Light

Heavy braking is not the only thing that can affect the lifespan of your car. You may not know it, but the weight your car carries affects not just your braking system’s performance, but also contributes to early brake deterioration.

If you are carrying too much weight on your car, more pressure is required when you brake — deteriorating the braking system faster. What you can do is to remove any unnecessary items in your car, and keep only those which are important.

Final Thoughts

Your braking system keeps you safe on the road. Millions of car crash accidents happen in the U.S. per year, and 5% of them are due to brake failure. This percentage might not seem significant, but it still sums up to hundreds of thousands yearly brake failure accidents.

By ensuring that your brakes are in good working condition, you can remain confident that you’ll be able to avoid paying costly repair and replacement bills due to early brake deterioration. This is on top, of course, of the assurance that your brakes will function properly every time you need it — keeping you away from car crash accidents.