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Uneven Brake Pad Wear

Big T

Big T

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These are from my son's '94 K2500 after 40K miles. Passenger side worn to the metal after being misled by the driver's side still having a lot of meat on it. I have the same issue on my '99, but opposite side. What's causing this? Stuck piston in the caliper? There's no pulling to one side when applying the brakes.
 

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  • Brake Pads.JPG
    Brake Pads.JPG
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Usually it's stuck slide surfaces and that's primarily due to stuck anchor pins that weren't lubed good enough
 
Inner pads is a caliper sticking issue, outer pads is an issue with the slides unless the outer pad is still like new, and the inner pad is gone, then thats a slide issue. The slide pins in these calipers really need to be serviced at every pad change, but most pad kits don't come with the stuff to do it. If your doing brakes, now would be a good time to upgrade them. SRW trucks can upgrade to the calipers, pads, and rotors from a DRW truck. The rotors are a 1/4" thicker than SRW, the pads have thicker backing plates, and the calipers are 3.285 VS the 3.15 for SRW trucks. I'm waiting on all of my stuff to come in now from RA to do mine as well as rebuild my front end.
 
THEFERMANATOR said:
Inner pads is a caliper sticking issue, outer pads is an issue with the slides unless the outer pad is still like new, and the inner pad is gone, then thats a slide issue. The slide pins in these calipers really need to be serviced at every pad change, but most pad kits don't come with the stuff to do it. If your doing brakes, now would be a good time to upgrade them. SRW trucks can upgrade to the calipers, pads, and rotors from a DRW truck. The rotors are a 1/4" thicker than SRW, the pads have thicker backing plates, and the calipers are 3.285 VS the 3.15 for SRW trucks. I'm waiting on all of my stuff to come in now from RA to do mine as well as rebuild my front end.
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When you say caliper sticking issue, are you referring to the piston?

We both want to do the upgrade to the dual piston calipers of the later model GMT-800 trucks. However, that's about $900 in parts, some time to assemble all the stuff, plus some machining. His truck is down as he ground into a rotor. I'm advising him to get new rotors to get it going, then we'll work on assembling the parts for the upgrade. Just need to know what to do on the current calipers. I also have the same issue on mine.

Not familiar with SRW vs DRW acronyms.
 
Yes, caliper wear. And I'm not doing the gmt-800 upgrade, I'm going with the calipers, rotors, and pads from a same year dually. They used a 1/4" thicker rotor, pads with thicker backing plates, and calipers with .135 larger piston. The gmt-800 calipers actually have the same clamping force as the dually calipers, butbeing dual pistons they spread it out better and use a longer pad for longer life. I don't have the coin for the gmt-800, so I'm just doing the dually stuff to complement the dually wheel cylinders and upgraded proportioning valve.
 
THEFERMANATOR said:
Yes, caliper wear. And I'm not doing the gmt-800 upgrade, I'm going with the calipers, rotors, and pads from a same year dually. They used a 1/4" thicker rotor, pads with thicker backing plates, and calipers with .135 larger piston. The gmt-800 calipers actually have the same clamping force as the dually calipers, butbeing dual pistons they spread it out better and use a longer pad for longer life. I don't have the coin for the gmt-800, so I'm just doing the dually stuff to complement the dually wheel cylinders and upgraded proportioning valve.
Click to expand...

Well, I've got the same brake pad wear issue on my '99 and the calipers were brand new, installed like 30K miles ago. So what is the caliper wear issue and how can I fix it? I have two sets of use calipers. Should I be swapping them to see which one works better?
 
Can you post a pic of each pad set from each side? Your pic above only shows your inboard pads. Need to see both sets to have an idea.
 
I guess my son is working on the truck tonight because of rain forecasted for tomorrow. So here are the pics. First Left. Second Right. Third Right, Fourth Left.


IMG_5567.JPG IMG_5566.JPG IMG_5569.JPG IMG_5568.JPG
 
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Looks like the calipers are hanging up on the pins. Pull them out, clean the rust off and lube them. Better yet buy new hardware
 
Big T said:
I guess my son is working on the truck tonight because of rain forecasted for tomorrow. So here are the pics. First Left. Second Right. Third Right, Fourth Left.


View attachment 46721
Click to expand...

Is the wear uneven top to bottom of the pad? If so this would be a bent or mismachined caliper. Age heat etc warped the caliper itself and it applies more pressure and wear at the top vs. bottom of the pad. Rebuilds I get sometimes have this problem from the last 100 exchanges and never gets corrected.

And , of course, it' be to fing easy just to quote one single damn picture on this forum.
 
btfarm said:
Looks like the calipers are hanging up on the pins. Pull them out, clean the rust off and lube them. Better yet buy new hardware
Click to expand...
Caliper pins hanging will almost always wear the outboard pad more than the inboard as the sticking pins causes the caliper to maintain pressure on the outboard pad since sticking pins won't let it go back out. This looks like a bad caliper as the 2 pads are wearing evenly to each other.
 
THEFERMANATOR said:
Caliper pins hanging will almost always wear the outboard pad more than the inboard as the sticking pins causes the caliper to maintain pressure on the outboard pad since sticking pins won't let it go back out. This looks like a bad caliper as the 2 pads are wearing evenly to each other.
Click to expand...
In the salt belt it's VERY common for the calipers to freeze up (rust) in the outside position as salty road crap gets packed into the pin holes. Then you are only using the inner pad. That probably isn't so in his (or your) location.
 
Thanks for the help. Can any explain why I have 4 calipers and three of the bleeder valves are the same size, but the forth one is much smaller? image.jpegimage.jpeg
 
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