Endless, Horrible, Squeaking
 

Eveyrone in my nieghborhood knows me. two or three guys like my big shiney wilwoods. The rest know my car as the loudest in the nieghborhood when I stop.

Does anyone have any suggestions? I want it to sound like a normal car again.

the louder they are the better they are.

i've had success with chamferring the edge of the pad. a nice 45* angle on the pad and some anti-squeal lube will usually quiet down the brakes.

in my experience, squeaking brakes has to do with chatter between the caliper and brake pad. Throw some (usually green) anti-squeak grease on the back side of the pad and on the contact points of the pad (the "ears"). This has fixed all of my squeaking brakes.

Yes. Angle the sides of the pad more and it should help big time.

Vash-

Typically some Permatex Disc Brake Quiet spray between the pad and caliper works (it basically adhere's the two together). Toyota's solution (for the Echo) was to double up on the shims between pads and calipers...

I bought some brake pads of evilbay for $.99, they don't squeak...

Or buy ------y street pads.

You can also glue the pads to the calipers. That works.

I have the wilwoods (goodwin BBK) and have had squeakie brakes for ever, regardless of pad or chamfer, slotted/cross drilled or smooth rotors. Y8S also has the same brakes and suggested making .020" aluminum shims in addition to the usual permatex antisqueel glue (which works for a month or two by itself). I have the aluminum ($5 at mcmaster), just have to make the time to drive to my dads to borrow his tin snips.

In the past I've tried the permatex gel and spray, both blue. The gel worked a lot better, probably because you can apply a bunch and as it dries it bolds/glues the pad to the caliper. Removing the pad is more of a PITA though, obviously, even though it says it "eases pad removal". The spray just put a thin coating, which didn't do much.

I also have a tube of CRC antisqueel glue, it's red instead of blue and is thicker. I never tried it though.

squeaky brakes = real car

Squeaking just lets people know your shit is for real.

:bowrofl:

word. Sometimes we have a train of like 10 miatas going to the track...lots of squeak. I really like to brake when people are next to me with windows down so see the pain on their faces.

It's some brutal squeaking. It's not a 'let's you know it's working' squeak, it's a conversation stops, both in the car and all up the street.

I hadn't heard about that. How do you do this? Grinder? pocket knife? throw pies at it?

Interesting. I have some copper of that thickness, it seems even gooier, and transfers heat well. Maybe layering both sides of it with the glue first would help.

I'd sure feel better if I did get a stare from every cop I pull up next to from my terrible insano break noise.

you can paypal me the royalties if it works.

I vote for the brake squeak stopping stuff from autoparts stores. I have had success with them on brakes before. It should only be like $1

ive had good luck with napa brand brake squeak stop, its in an aresol can any you just spray it on the back of the pads before you install them

I'll license you my copper upgrade idea. Or, in broader terms, 'whatever thin, metalish thing you have laying around'.

heat transfer is inversely proportional to thickness. material selection is relatively inconsequential as long as it's metal.

Yes, I foolishly wasted my money on products like Artic Silver for years when heat syncing my CPU in my computer. Now, armed with the knowledge that there is only a 0.001" gap (a 20th of the gap mentioned in the brakes here), I typically use a paste of flour and crumpled tobacco leaves.

stop being sarcastic mr Fm. tobacco and flour isn't metal. and neither is brake quiet goo.

The one manly thing about our ------y-ass cars is the brake squeal and you're trying to get rid of it? :magna:

Sarcasm is all I have left! But I do think you're a lot better off with copper than alum if you can swing it. The brake quiet stuff does scare me a bit for thermal reasons....

heh heh

the higher melting point might be useful too I suppose

Abe, I'm sorry for making fun of your brake squeal last Sunday. I didn't realize it would drive you to this. :rolleyes:

Hah! Yes...

My friend's in town for the brewer's convention. Not opening a couple stouts a bit early (tonight or maybe sat morning) is going to be tough. Hmmm, you should come down tonight, it'll be a night of bad video games and liquor.... Maybe even a movie, who knows what the night holds.



---------------
Anyway, I made a serious effort to fix the brakes last night. I took a long hard look at the car, then popped the hood and started messing with my aweful boost control. And I still need to do some mundanes like changing the oil.

Also, if you hook your barometer to where it can see boost pressure, funny things happen. Just an FYI.

Does anyone have any advice on chamfering the pads? Matt, you don't run any grease/glue, just the alum pads, right?

First report:
Copper sheets seem to work, some. It took a long time to make the car stop right (after compressing all the calipers). It still feels a little soft. It squeaks much less, but a lot more than none.

Ok, yeah, the squeaking with my copper sheets is way better than before. Sometimes it'll squeak, but it's rare. It took many very hard stomps to get the copper to behave and allow the car to stop using all four brakes. It still feels just a bit soft, but it is so quiet. Feels like it needs more leg to stop, probably I ought to bleed it all anyway.

But quiet and no anti-squeak in sight. Now we'll see how it holds up, but I think it's squeaking less and less as time goes on.

Thanks Mr. Y8s. :-) You da man...

you didn't use anti-squeal? between the pads and shims?

I would suggest getting a louder exhaust to combat your brake squeaking problem :)

Nope. Well, there's the backing that comes on the pads, I didn't take it off. It was completely worn away where the pistons pushed. I'd post pics but they are at home.

OH!!! By "home" I mean, in my glovebox. bbiaf.

Oh, sorry, looks like I'll have to fire the photographer - he didn't get any shots of the back of the pads, so you can't see what was there. But here's the pads and the shims:

http://abefm.smugmug.com/photos/282942909_UPanB-M.jpg

And here's installed:
http://abefm.smugmug.com/photos/282943206_tPxwh-M.jpg

More pics/comments:
http://abefm.smugmug.com/gallery/476...82942999_FzuFG

abe what compound are you running? super dust?

Super clean-it-once-a-year I think. :-)

Er, they are the "smart pad" compound, but I don't know if they are SP10 or SP20, they only had one kind when I got them.

They are nice, the first stop is.. reduced performance, but not scary at all. If you've been going 80 on the freeway for an hour, the first stop is a little slow since they had time to cool, but there's nothing major involved in getting them working, in normal driving they are just much better than stock.

if you keep having problems, I'll sacrifice myself and offer $50 + shipping for the wilwoods :giggle:

seriously, next pads, get the Q compound to run on the street. use the B for the track. listen to whatever opinion you like best in terms of swapping pads back and forth. the Q are just about dreamy on the street. very easy on dust and squeal to the point of being acceptable.

Take them off and send em over here.. I'll send you my brakes in return. ;)

I'll live with horrid squeel... my suspension already clanks.. :)

I may very well try that. This kit I got came with the smart pads, I believe. Or maybe I ordered them, whatever it was, the first time I was racing an NSX down a 5 mile mountain, and I got introduced to turn-or-die-cause-stopping's-not-an-option I decided something better was called for. :-)

I did notice the outer pads wearing much different than the inners, so I swapped them, it seemed to be perfect timing actually.

Still, with the shims in there, I'm pretty happy overall. I'm sure I could live with better-than-metal-masters and worse than what I've got.

I am not sure what compound pads you use, but try going with a ceramic pad set if you are using metalic. You can also try carbon metalic. Make sure you don't have any lateral runout on the rotors. Another thing would be to make sure your caliper slides aren't sticking.

someone didn't look at the photos.

If I go by looking at the pictures then I would throw those pads in the garbage. To me those pads are worn out.

@AbeFM, you said
"I did notice the outer pads wearing much different than the inners, so I swapped them, it seemed to be perfect timing actually."

I would suggest to check the calipers slides. They might be sticking. I am not here guessing like a lot of people do here or trying to make someone look stupid with every single post. That is why my post count is low. If I know of something I might say it to help someone out. Don't really care for the sarcasm. I am telling you this from experience of working in a shop doing 4 to 5 brake axels everyday.

zarish, you're still missing something important: the wilwood calipers are four piston--

no slides.

:giggle:
Damn, got me there. I am an idiot. Never even looked at the part. My bad.
In that case, yeah just keep trying different shims or pads. The other squek treatment stuff doesn't really work. I had luck with carbon metalic as far as noise is concerned. They take a bit longer to brake since they don't warm up as quick, but did help with squeak.

the wilwoods squeak because they're for racin' and dont have all the clips and springs and shims and whatnot. plus the pads are not designed not to squeak because who cares on the track?

I ran some generic axis-ultimates (which my buddy who runs an auto parts store assures me are the same parts off the same line....), which were pretty decent, but the overall feel and response of these 4 pot brakes is pretty nice. They are just linear, no better way to put it.

Now I'm just getting used to stopping without the squeaking, I had no idea what a difference it had made in my braking profile.
-Abe.

P.S. Zarish, good attitude to have. :-)