Tag Archives: brakes

Brakes squeeking at low speeds

A few weeks ago I replaced the front rotors on the truck and the pads I chose where ceramic. My thought process at the time was not to go with metalic pads and thus avoid any squealing. The rotors I got were steel, nothing special, so it was the metal to metal I wanted to stay away from. Needless to say ceramic was not the route to go. After the rotors warmed up any low speed stop would cause squeaking. I lived with it for a while but Friday I needed to do something. I picked up some cheaper semi-metalic pads for about a third less and put them on this morning and wouldn’t you know it, no squeal. Lesson learned high quality is always the best choice.

I’m sure ceramic is good for the right application just not for what I was doing. So for me and regular old steel rotors don’t use ceramic pads go with semi-metalic. I’ll try to remember that next time.

Brakes are important

Friday morning I got up at five to head over to Cool Springs for the morning skate. It was a rainy morning and as I got about 1/2 way there I got a little surprise. When coming to a stop light I press on the brakes and the pedal goes to the floor, barely slowing me down. Not good …. but it was 5:30 am and traffic was very light. Their was no one in front of me so I was able to turn off. Took a moment to gather my thoughts and then kept going, pumping the brakes to slow down. Yes can you say I’m getting dumber by the moment.

A mile or so down the road I came to my senses and headed home. Lucky I work from home otherwise it would have made for a interesting day for Kay. At about 6pm I got a chance to take a look at what the problem was and after a little looking found a line had gone bad. In the fall I had replaced the right front caliper and when doing so rotated the brake line the wrong way. Because of that it was resting on the boot of the ball joint and it had rubbed a hole in it. So after Kay came home from work I went to the parts store and got a replacement. Actually ordered one for in the morning as it was in the local warehouse but not at the store.

Saturday picked up the cable and replaced it, rotated the tires at the same time. And when replacing the cable made sure to pay attention to how the cable was resting. I’ll be checking it off and on for the next few weeks to. I could only image what could have happened if it failed some other time.