Hi Everyone.

Heard a scraping noise coming from my right rear wheel that got worse when I turned to the left. Took the wheels off, and discovered that the front brake pads were only half worn. Replaced them along with the rotors anyway. Rotors were pretty worn from the action of the pads.


When I pulled the rears, the outside pad was down to metal on one side of the pad, and had about 1/8 of an inch on the other side. The the inside pad had about 1/8 of an inch evenly across the pad, but was not down to metal at all.

I tow a stock trailer with the truck. The trailer is equipped with electric brakes, and I have a controller installed in the truck.

I always thought that the fronts were supposed to go before the backs. In my case, the opposite happened. Is this normal?

How do I know if I have a stuck caliper? I'd hate to replace pads and rotors only to find them eaten up by a malfunctioning caliper. I've not yet looked at the driver's rear side.


Thanks
Rog

 

Can you smell the brake pad after you drive it a while? That would be a good indication. It could be the park brake pads on the inside of the rear rotors. What year of truck?

 

2004 XLT new style, 5.4 L, towing package, 4WD.

No smell at all. And I don't see any discoloration on the disk.

Also, the pins holding the caliper were greased, and the caliper moved easily.

 

you are probably just fine

The rear wear is due to hauling heavy loads.

Older trucks use proportioning valves to reduce the pressure to rear wheels to prevent locking the brakes. This forced the fronts do to 60-70% of the stopping action, thereby wearing out the fronts first.

Then they started using load sensing prop valves on the rear axle to reduce the rear brake pressure. This way you have better braking performance when you have a load in the bed. This could wear the rears faster if you always haul heavy loads.

Now they just use the ABS / ECS / ECP / Traction control (depending on how new your truck is) to keep the rears from locking. So it is not surprising that newer trucks are wearing out the rears at the same rate or faster than the fronts. Especially if you tow / haul a lot you could easily wear out the rear pads before the fronts.

So put some new pads and maybe rotors on it and you are good to go.
Of course, clean and grease the sliders while you are at it. And keep an eye on it just in case it starts to hang up.

 

Thanks. Good advice. I found dozens of posts on the web about new F150s wearing out rear pads twice as fast as fronts.