2 new sets of brakes, still grinding at low speed

Joined
Aug 12, 2015
Messages
785
Location
Central NY
2017 RAV4. PO ran on bad brakes for so long they stopped grinding.

I replaced the front axle with new Napa premium rotors/pads. About 1 month in they started making a grinding/whirring noise at any speed less than 5mph, especially when warmed up.

Replaced the rotors with new Napa adaptive one = no difference
Replaced the pads/hardware with Autozone Gold, greased all contact points and slider pins = fixed

So it was the pads. NOW a month later I have the same issue again. Grinding at low speed usually right before coming to a stop. Although not as bad.

I’m gonna assume it’s the calipers. Am I overlooking anything at this point? Could it be defective pads again? I’ve never had a caliper fail on me like this. Especially sub 40k miles, but I suppose running a pad past it’s wear point will do it’s damage.
 
Does the owner use any automatic car washes or any car wash service that uses an aggressive (acid) wheel cleaner? Perhaps an outside influence is causing the pads to be contaminated or the rotors to be etched.
 
Does the owner use any automatic car washes or any car wash service that uses an aggressive (acid) wheel cleaner? Perhaps an outside influence is causing the pads to be contaminated or the rotors to be etched.

Now that you mention it, it was quiet up until I cleaned the wheels the other day. All I used was car soap and a brush to clean the brake dust off. No hard chemicals, and the brakes were cold. Made sure I drove the car later to dry it off.
 
Honestly, that application is just super noisy. Toyota has a TSB (T-SB-0025-19) with an updated pad kit to resolve the issue. The pads are very expensive, but they did work for me.
 
I had this issue with our 2018 Sienna. I finally figured out is that the aftermarket pad shims were shifting downward, causing the one caliper ear to not have a shim. I ended up taking the original Toyota shims and clipping them on the new aftermarket pads (after removing the aftermarket shims).
 
Back
Top