eviljosh

normal braking car stops fine

hard brake and a loud grinding emits from the front left wheel area, only when hard brake pressure is appiled.

inspected brake pad and theres heaps of pad left, at least an inch or so. is it worthwile dissassembling the calapers and seeing what the hell is going on in there, or could he be suspension related?

I remember reading a thread where a guy had the same problem and it turned out not to be related to the brakes at all and had something to do with the struts


With all that being said, i had a problem in the past with the dust shield of the same wheel, the mechanic had somehow crushed the dust shield so it was contacting with the rotor hence creating a f***ing awful racket - how could the dust shield create grinding when braking?

ideas?

guido

does it crunch the hole time you brake or is it intermittent? If you have lots of pad left and your rotars are in fair cond. i would start to look else where. When your in park turn your wheel back and forth, (with the engine on of course) all the way from one side to the other. Do you hear the noise then? Also pop off the wheel check for leakage on the strut seals. Some noises can be hard to find and sometimes you'll hear them and theres really nothing wrong. These are just a few ideas i came up with.

Also is this noise present when your braking on a smooth road or a rough one?

also are your pads worn on a angle even slighty? if so it wouldn't make even contact with the rotor. Thus leaving some space for dirt,dust or small pebbles. If you don't have a dust cover on there in could get up inside. i have no dust covers on either side of the car. Mine where kinda rotten so i just removed them when i did my brake overhaul last summer. However i don't get a grinding sound from it.

Dmitry

you can't have 1" of brake pads. New brake pad is only 8mm (0.31").

check both pads on each caliper, sometimes they wear uneven.

also there may be something between rotor and pads, remove pads and inspect.

Mad-Machine

^^^ that struck me as odd too. Our pads are just not that thick.. even if you include the backing plate.

eviljosh

as you guys can probabily guess, im from australia where we use CM and M rahter than inches and feet, so i got a little muddled.

Ripped the calapar off the rotor and found that the brake pad wasn't smooth, rather it was pitted and had holes and crap in it. heaps of pad left, just chunks of the pad (1mm max chunks.. so very small chunks, not half the pad) were missing, probabily the chunks came off, then got caught in the pad and caused the imbalance.

cleaned all the crap out of the pad and test drove, worked fine, no grinding.

im guessing desintegrating pads isn't good, so ill replace soon tongue.gif

Dmitry

check if your rotors are smooth after that.

zoned019

I wonder how that happens...? How does the pad get holes in it? sorta weird.

Mad-Machine

it can happen if you really bake the brakes. The braking material is actually quite soft and if not glued to the backing plate, can be snapped in half easily. If you really bake the brakes, you can fry the glue right out of them, they they just start to crumble.

Cottonmouth

It may be a little bit of rust buildup forming on the outer edge of the rotor. Take the whel off and tap the rusty bits off with a hammer. Make sure you wear some safety glasses when you do this cause nothing hurts like getting a rusty piece of steele stuck in your eye... Been there... done that.

Mad-Machine

good safety tip.. I had steel in my eye once. By the time I got to the eye doctor (Several days later) it had started to rust and they needed to grind away part of my eye (it grows back) to get the rust out.