Today I had a Toyota Hiace van that required front brake replacement.. It unfortunately had not been serviced by a mechanic for along time, instead just had the owner changing his own oil. This led to todays problem as the brakes had not been inspected each service as they should have been.
Grinding noise was coming from the front brakes. The brake pads had completely worn out all the friction material. This allowed the metal backing plate of the pad to come into contact with the disc rotors. The metal on metal quickly scores the rotors as you can see in the picture below. The rotors have a minimum thickness set by the manufacturer. Today these were worn to a thickness which was too thin to allow machining so they had to be replaced.
A perfect example of why servicing is so important. The brake pads would have needed to be replaced but the rotors would have been still serviceable had they not gone metal to metal saving the owner the extra expense.
The disc rotors and pads were replaced. This is a larger job then on a lot of other vehicles as the hubs need to be completely removed from the knuckle. As opposed to a lot of cars which have floating rotors, which are much easier to remove. Once the brake replacement was complete a road test was carried out, this is when the important bedding in process happens. If your vehicle requires brake repairs call a professional – Certified Automotive.
