Last Updated on July 3, 2021
The brake pads are an important piece of equipment that is responsible for your vehicle’s braking system. They are made with highly durable rubber material that stuck with a drum braking system with a brake rotor. Every brake pad has a limited time set for use safely.
After a certain distance of driving, it decays and no longer gives safety anymore. A damaged or old brake pad doesn’t have the ability to create friction in order to stop your wheel when you press the brake paddle bar. The braking pad period derives from the usage condition, manufacturer’s product quality, whether you are driving, and the weight of your vehicle. Usually, in hot weather, the pads get hot easily and fail to work perfectly.
For a safety ride, you need to know about your braking pad’s condition, how many miles you have ridden or what is the physical condition of the brake pads you should be well aware of. Many times, it happened that the newly installed braking pads get torn off due to heavy driving and severe road condition. Excess heat melts the rubber material easily.
Today, In this article, I will be guiding and sharing tips and advice to know about the condition for better driving. Following this article, you will be able to tell whether your brake pads are bad or not easily.
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The Symptoms of Bad Brake Pads
Well, you can check the pads physically regularly before starting your car every day. Also, while driving, you may get some indicators or symptoms that you can understand the condition. The indications or symptoms are mentioned below:
Creates noise
When a braking pad decays to the last, the metallic part comes out. In the drum braking system, when you press the braking pad, the metallic element will reach the rotor, and the friction will create a metallic fraction sound or noise. This means your brake pads are bad. Stop immediately there before harming your brake rotor.
Unstable braking experience
A bad braking pad will never give you a smooth stoping or slowing experience. Mostly it has three to four parts. All of them need to be in perfect and equal condition to slow down your vehicle. Thus when any one of these gets bad, you will know about jerks or unstable slowing.
Warning lights in the dashboard
At the present time, most modern cars have a braking warning indication system in the dashboard. If anything goes wrong or malfunctions, the warning lights will automatically let you know. Stop the car and inspect the braking pads physically.
Reverse force in brake paddle
You will get a reverse force forcing upside in your braking paddle if your brakes are bad. It will be jerky and a vibration you will feel while slowing down. A bumpy and cranking experience surely not gives a sign of everything all right. You should be sensible about these things while driving. This is also an indication of bad brake pads.
Manual inspection
The one-fourth-inch technique will guide you about the physical inspection condition of braking pads. In the disk brakes, the one forth of the one-inch outside is the perfect condition to drive. If it gets less, you will have to understand that there is something wrong. You will need to change the brake pads as soon as possible.
One side pulling force while braking
A car needs four equally balanced braking pads. At the same time, pressing the brake pad, the pair of wheels works at a time. If one wheel gets less friction, it will be faster than the other one, and your vehicle will turn automatically to the faster side. The faster wheel has a bad brake pad.
Burning smells
Another easy method to know about the braking condition is to get the burning level while slowing down. When the rubber band gets weaker and pads get hotter, with slow braking, it burns much and creates fewer fractions. If the smell comes abnormal, then do a quick check. You may get your brake pads unhealthy.
Bouncing hydraulic
If you have installed a good braking lever, you may not feel the braking pad jerks. But the pads may be spoiled in the meantime. So what should you do? Drive in a smooth road condition under slow speed and gently apply the brakes. If on the smooth road condition the car jumps ups and downs, then the pads are gone, and you can be assured.
Brakes are the most important part of safety matters while driving. You should always check and everything before you start riding. Make a practice of checking brakes off and on. You can make a monthly chart to check all the parts of your vehicle. Apart from that, you now know the warning or signals of having a bad brake after reading this article. Let’s be careful and be cautious while driving.
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I’m Daniel Galbreath, founder of OffRoadersWorld.
I spend my spare time writing on this website, OffRoaders World. I share my thoughts and reviews on different types of gears, share tips sometimes. This website is specially created and regularly updated basically to help other folks like me when I started to solve the various problems they face, specially when they go off-roading.