Tauras? got get the cheapest new rotors the parts store has and put them on and be done with it

https://www.rockauto.com/en/catalog/ford,2002,taurus,3.0l+v6+dohc,1385760,brake+&+wheel+hub,rotor,1896


They are pretty darn cheap. Turning them would be more expensive. They are throw away rotors, not like the thick walled ones.

I have to agree, never had a problem with the chinese rotors either. The bendix, and wagner stuff has been junk for me on newer cars.

4406 even factory rotors we had some with problems.As for store brand like Advance etc we had little to none.Yeah every now and then a bad one but very very few.Did thousands in my timeas a tech.Oh yeah you wont beievethe total junk people want to have turned.had a Porsche that had rotors .250 under discard.thats not a misprint .250 and the guy wanted them turned.Let alone some with rust holes 1/8 to 1/4 inch deep or more.Rocky

Ya, factory mopar rotors for minivans were the worst.... chunks missing out of the backside while under warranty. Showed them to the zone manager and of course, no warranty on brakes its a wear item, chunks missing is a normal wear item I guess. I buy new bendix brand, and bendix pads within a year same thing, chunks missing. I then bought $13 with my commercial discount china rotors, and new free warranty bendix pads from advance and no more issues. Those rotors made it thru the bendix pads, had advance ceramics put on without turning and are on the van still at 200,000 miles, 150,000 on those rotors. Same story on tons of cars back when I did this for side money to support my car habit, good to hear it is still true.

in my experience/experiment turning rotors for my minivan, i don't use a brake lathe. i made a fixture that fully supports the hub area as it mounts on the hub.
provided the rotor is thick enough, and not full of rust holes on the back side, i first run them through the blaster cabinet. mount on the fixture, then mount the fixture in my lathe. i have found it usually takes only .004-.005 to true up, using a fairly slow rpm and feed rate on the lathe.
i have zero problems doing this until i reach the low limit on the rotors.
using mid grade pads, this experiment has gone tens and tens of thousands of miles, never once experiencing warped rotors, but i don't run the pads down to metal on metal contact either.

now with that said, it is a waste of time and money doing this when rotors are so cheap ! also, using a "real" lathe and the correct feed and speed, i feel you get a MUCH better surface on the rotor than the brake rotor machines in use. couple that with a proper bed in procedure, and warped rotors are a thing of the past.
this is just my experiment, i don't recommend you try it. [and most do not have a lathe at home anyway] i did this just to "see what happens".

My wife had a Taurus a bit older than yours and it had regular brake-related issues. She swore off Phord after that one.

My experience -- FWIW -- is turning a warped rotor is only viable if the warping is reeeeeeellllly slight. Otherwise, it'll just warp again ever quicker because the thickness will be more uneven where all the heat is generated.

What factory? The brake rotor factory or the car assembly factory?








I have a theory on how this fixed the problem.

Brake pad deposits left on the rotor. Causing a pulsation in the brake pedal and the actual rotor thickness is good.

If cutting the rotors to make them true brings them too thin, they will warp again soon.

When the rotors get hot, they expand. If the wheel lugs aren't tightened equally (torqued) they expand unequally. When they cool they contract unequally. Soon those expansion/contraction differences result in pulling parts of the rotor out or in which causes warping. The poster child for this was the early Taurus. In an effort to save weight, ford made the original rotors with a stamped steel center with cast iron outer ring. These would warp if you looked at them wrong. The word finally came out from Ford that the nuts had to be torqued.
The warped rotors couldn't be cut without warping again. Soon all cast iron rotors were on the market. They were more difficult to warp. I never had problems after I started retorquing the nuts after getting tires mounted at the tire store.
Another contributing factor was heat. Again in an effort to save weight, Ford outfitted these cars with 10" disks, which were really toooo small for the car size. When the '96 big brakes came out, I switched my SHO to the later SHO disks. It is hard to believe the increased stopping power an extra inch of disk diameter gives you. No more problems!

It's been my experience that trying to flatten out rotors after they warp is wasted effort, especially when replacements are so inexpensive.

R.

I re-torque mine after getting new tires just for that reason. I rotate my own tires so they get re-torqued then. What started me doing that was my wife`s car brakes were fine until we had new tires installed and I never thought about whether they torqued them or not. When The rotors warped not long after it made me think. So now I always check them and no more issues on any of my cars.