I need some help with this one... check this out. I've been hearing a grinding noise coming from my passenger rear brakes which sounded like the noise that little tab makes to let you know your pads are low. Well... the pads weren't low.

I removed the caliper, gave the rotor a few good whacks, pulled the rotor off and pieces of metal fell out from the brakes. As you can hopefully see, it was ****ed. My theory is that the spring that holds the shoe to the "hub" (I guess) failed and exploded and ****ed everything up. I swear I heard a loud crunchy bang from the rear end of my car when I was driving but I wasn't sure if I was going nuts or I actually heard it. I was worried it was my diff but it was probably this all along. There were a few more pieces that got destroyed that I didn't take pics of. The more I took off, the more pieces I found.





So I had to drive this home and I had to make do. Fortunately, I have a 24 hour Autozone near me that had the parking brake hardware for the GS, so I bought it and replaced what broke but it still didn't seem right. It was already 12 in the morning, snowing, and freezing so I decided to put it all back together and test drive it. It drove fine and it stopped fine (better with the new rotors and pads actually, even in the snow) but the grinding persisted. It had changed a bit though. Instead of being constant, it was very quiet when going straight but when making left hand turns you could still hear it grinding just as loud as before.

I think something is seriously wrong with the assembly. There was a very thick metal bracket looking piece that was all twisted up. It looks like it might have been tack welded. It is the upper most piece in the last pic I posted. I'm thinking it was something structural or that supported something vital. There wasn't a replacement for it in the kit and for it to be bent like that it had to undergo some serious forces. I don't know...

I've been looking at this post, our brakes are very similar, but I haven't figured it out.

Does anyone happen to have a diagram of these brakes? I have an 01 GS300.

Also I was wondering... do I really need the parking brake back there? Can I take the whole **** out and be fine? Will that cause an issue with the rotor and caliper? Because if not I'd rather do that than have it grinding whatever it's grinding. At least until I can figure out what parts I need and find time to install them.

My car is totally stock by the way. No mods at all. Only 73k miles, fairly clean and pretty well taken care of. It had Toyota OEM pads and hardware all around when I took it apart.
Let me know what you guys think.

 

this is a common issue..no, u dont need the P brake

 

Wow, is this really a common issue? Damn.

Well if that's the case then that's a relief. I'm ripping that **** out tomorrow morning.

 

yes, it explodes..its a metal tab that has a tack weld which overtime rusts out causing it to get lodged and kaboom...ive had 3 gs and they all did the same.. Left rear wheel

 

Haha thats crazy. So I was actually pretty close.
Thanks for the help dude. I was worried my brakes were ****ed.

 

Funny. I thought I was the only one this had happened to..
Nice to know I'm not alone.

 

yea mine doesn’t work either, i bet 90% of gs e brake are malfunctioned.

 

So I took the whole parking brake assembly out and went for a test drive and it was STILL grinding. Took everything apart again and I noticed some shiny metal where shiny metal probably shouldn't be.




I looked at the rotor and sure enough there were grooves cut out from the hub thing grinding into it.



I figured it got twisted or some thing (couldn't really tell by looking at it) so I took my hammer and beat it back a little bit, then sanded the edges down to smooth it out. Put every thing back together, went for another test drive aaaaaaaaaand... The other side was grinding too.

So back up on the lift, brakes off again, and... same issue. I don't know why this happened on the driver side too when it was the passenger side that exploded.





Again, I smacked it back into place, cleaned it up a bit, put it all together and FINALLY no more damn grinding.

In the first two pics you can clearly see the rust spot where the bracket broke off. It probably pulled the bottom of the cover thing with it and caused it to dig into the rotor. But that doesn't explain what happened to the other side.
Meh, just happy it's fixed for now.

 

Just for future reference, it is very common for rotors, especially aftermarket ones, to make contact to the lip of that backing plate and make noise, simply grind down that lip slightly and they will no longer touch.

 

Who made the replacement rotors and what is the PN. Its likely they don't match the OEM specs...

 

I have had this problem with Centric C-TEK blanks, as well as Centric Premium rotors that were slotted and resold by R1Concepts.

 

They're Duralast something or others from AutoZone. PN: 31253.
I was thinking the same thing but it was only one spot that was being grinded against. I'm fairly certain it was my car and not the rotors, but who knows.

Put about 200 miles on the car since I did the brakes and I haven't heard any noise at all.