I have about 53,000 miles on my 2015 Honda Fit and I've never done a brake job. On my old cars I would always have the brake rotors turned or machined to make them ready for new pads. Can you turn or machine Honda fit pads? They have never been turned before

 

You never turn brake pads. Only rotors.

I would just buy new rotors, they are not that expensive and will tend to warp quicker being a thinner material. Turning rotors is also old technology.

 

thx of course I meant rotors

 

New set of OEM sized rotors are about $55 a piece around most stores. I'd just get new, especially if you put over 50k on the originals.

 

They can be turned but for how much a new set of rotors is I would just buy new rotors.

 

The problem you will run into or what I had to locally was time. My O'Rilely autocrats would turn them for something like $10-15 each but they wanted them for 24 hours. I didn't want to leave my car apart on jack stands for a day, so I bought new rotors. I kept the OEM rotors, so maybe next time I'll have those turned? Who knows since I gave the Fit to my 18 year old son to drive

 

I'm not finding much info on brake jobs. I'm fixin' to do my fronts. I'll go to Autozone and get pads, rotors, and a bottle of fluid. Anything else I need to know? This ain't my first rodeo.

 

I would just make sure the original rotors are not badly scored (grooves in it aren't deeper than about 0.1 mm), its thickness has not been word down to below manfacturer's spec for min thickness, and that the thickness from point to point along the circumference, and from the outer edge to the inner edge, is not out of tolerance..In the olden days this kind of info was often indicated right on the rotor. I'm guessing that spot to spot along circumference should be plus or minus 0.1mm (.plus or minus 0.004 inches). If the wear was within spec then I'd just re-use the old rotors. I could be wrong but I'm guessing you can go through 3 sets of pads before the rotors get worn down, assuming they aren't metallic pads..In the olden days typical reason for turning rotors is they are scored, scored because brake pads were worn down to the rivits, but today rivits aren't use anymore. If the scoring was very bad, the rotor would need to be replace because you could not turn it down without bringing it below the minimum thickness. Yes warping from heat is possible, but you'd have to really brake hard for along time to do that. By a long time I mean a long time. Maybe you has one foot on the brake pedal and the other on the throttle pedal. Or the caliper pistons were stuck too far out in the caliper cylinder and thus putting constant force on the pads even though your foot is not on the brake pedal.

 

Do you have an impact driver with a thick Phillips head? There are little silver screws that hold the disc brakes and they can be a pita to bust lose. I actually loosened mine and tightened with a little bit of antisieze on the threads early on in ownership. Honestly I don't know why Honda uses them. This is my first Honda and none of my previous cars needed those screws to keep the rotors in place. The wheel does a pretty good job of that.

 

^^ This. Was a big pain in the butt when I did my brakes the first time. It's not necessary to reinstall it. They're only there to hold the rotor on during manufacturing the car. Lowes sells a really good tool that makes the removal easy here.

 

I seem to recall my Fit being without the rotor retention screws. Maybe my memory is wrong. I wouldn't use one of those hand-impact drivers though. I bought one 45 years ago and tried using it but banging on it didn't seem to make it easy to keep Phlips head bits from coming out of the screw head. I used the #3 or #4 philips bit that came with the driver, and the adapter that came with the driver, that allowed a 1/2 inch drive wrench to work with a bit that had a 5/16 inch hex.. Instead of attaching the adapter to the impact driver, I attached it to a long 1/2 inch drive breaker bar. Even a ratchet driver might work. Then I would push the screw inward with a hand on the breaker bar or ratchet driver where it contacts the screw, and turn the wrench handle my other hand. Pushing in on the wrench had with my hand seemed to do a betterjob of prevent the Philips bit from jumping out of the screw head, than pushing in on a phikops head screwdriver, or banging with the hand impact driver. You could also attach a 1/2 inch drive extension of a helpful length between the wrench handle and the adapter that adapts 1/2 inch drive to 5/16 inch hex bit. It would have been nice if Honda had used Torx head screws or even Allen head screws, instead of Philips head. I'm guessing they bought a large number of Philips head screws 40 years ago before Torx head screws became commonplace, and that they haven't run out yet.