Hi guys,
This week I've had some weird issues with my brakes. Last week when I had my TTE lip installed, the guy left my parking brake on and drove a lot on it, like a 100 miles.

Does leaving the parking break on and driving ONLY wear the pads faster? That's what I thought.

Well yesterday, the brakes have been acting funny. When I drive from 35mph to 65, the steering wheel shakes a lot left to right and is smooth from 70-up. When I brake, the car shakes violently from left to right as I see the headlight aim vibrating. When I slow down to a stop, it's not a smooth stop. It's like a slow, pause, slow, pause drive. When I'm parked and stomping on the brakes, I hear a sqeak from the front left side everything I hit the brake pedal. When I'm at a red light and starting to roll when it's green, I hear a click click from the front left side.

I think my pads are going bad, but just wondering if the rotors or anything else is wrong. Can someone help. The Search button is timing out on me.

Thanks,
Johnny

 

man that's not good.... seems like the rotor is warped also, at least. check the pad and see if it's gone. if the rotor is warped too bad, you can't surface them anymore

and i thought there is a separate foot brake line for the parking brakes in the back? umm...... regardless, not good

 

Yea the pads have like 2 mm left in the front. I can't see the back ones too clear. They are look like they're running out also though. I felt the rotors and they feel smooth, no deep ditches or anything. What do you mean by separate foot brake?

Does driving with the parking brake pressed ONLY wear the pads faster?

The strong vibrations left to right of the car and steering wheel scare me when I hit the brakes at 80 or high speeds. Can the brake pistons mess up or something or will just resurfacing and putting new pads cure it all?

Thanks for responding at this time in the morning Rominl.

I was driving home from the gym and I was scared something bad was gonna happen. I need to save my money for mods and not repairs.

 

well it's night time for me so it's cool

2mm in the front that's like nothing left, i think that's dangerous level already? you can't just feel the rotors, it's always pretty flat, but when you brake and vibrate that's what counts. and if you can actually feel something on the rotors, that's beyond repair, almost

the parking brake is in the rear, and i believe it's something like a drum brake setup, kinda separate from how the normal brakes works. that's just what i heard though. you can try to pm rmmgs4 or pearlpower about it, they know more

about the car vibrating left to right? do you mean just left to right? or you mean vibrating left AND right? that's different. if it's left to right, that's very bad, it's like you lost the left brakes and only the right ones are stopping hard. if it's vibrating left and right, sounds like rotors are damaged.

pistons COULD mess up, but unless the body shop guy did something very stupid during that 100 miles, i'd say it's pretty hard?

 

Thanks Rominl. I'll pm them.

I've never had this happen on a car before. I didn't hear the metal plates hitting the rotors, which is why I thought they were alright. The car vibrates physically left to right hard. The fronts of all the rotors feel smooth to me. When I roll from a red light, it feels like the brakes or something is holding it back making the clicking noise. And slowing to a red light isn't good; it slows pauses slow pauses.

I hope the pistons aren't bad. I didn't know they could mess up.

 

Driving with the parking brake on will usually cause some noise, a bit of heat, and on the extreme, warp the rear drum portion of the rotor and/or break an internal part of the drum parking brake assembly, but that is rare and you would have to drive ALOT for that to happen plus you would feel vibration from the rear of the car as it heats up. If you stop at that point you should be ok, just wore down the shoes a bit. Regardless this would not cause your steering wheel to vibrate while braking. A parking brake is mechanically connected to some small shoes inside the rear rotor and are not connected to the front in anyway.

Steering wheel vibration (shake) while braking is the result of something up front of the car.
Most likely cause-warped brake rotor(s) up front or loose brake component.
Since you mention you have 2mm left on the outer pad I would suspect the brake rotor is out of round and requires replacement or turning. I have turned well over 1000 rotors and at this point unless you have a dial gauge you will not know if your rotor is warped too far or is too thin unless you take it to a shop for inspection. Also a brake rotor can have hot spots on it which will prevent turning the same as flywheels. My Supra rotors on my S/C GS4 always had hot spots from very hard braking and could never be turned.

Normally the inner pad wears more than the outer pad unless the caliper is seized up. Since your outer pad is 2mm, your inner pad may not even have any material on it compounding your situation.

I have seen people wear their rotor down to the vanes and not realize it.

So the best thing to do since you have to replace your pads is to take your rotors in and have them checked. Kragen(oops not in Texas), Advance,Autozone, PepBoys all do this. Just give them a few hours as normally they have a few in front of you.

 

maybe i didn't read everything but... why would any installer need to drive 100 miles to have a front lip installed?

 

I got my car checked out and fixed this past weekend. Thanks Rominl and PearlPower. It was the front rotors. They were warped and had to go through the machine twice to get resurfaced. I got all the rotors resurfaced. Also I replaced the front and rear brake pads. It looked like since the pads were soo low, I was feeling the rotors more causing all the vibrations. I'm just glad it didn't cost too much to repair.

Johnny

 

Good to hear.

Low pads=more heat=warped rotors which is why it is always a good idea to replace pads before their time. Glad the car is back on the road safely.

 

congrats on the fix. glad that everythign worked out fine

 

I have a similar problem. How much did it cost to have the rotors resurfaced?

 

should be pretty cheap, 100 bucks at most?

 

It only cost 7.5-10 each rotor if you take them out yourself. Autozone or any Auto shop will do it.

Brakes are smooth now plus steering wheel doesn't shake as much.

The pads cost me 150 for all of them though.

 

Glad to hear everything worked out.