I posted a couple weeks ago about my 1989 Honda Accord’s shrieking brakes. I finally got the brakes fixed yesterday - I bought the new pads and a friend installed them for me (man, it’s nice driving around without hearing that constant racket!). In the process, I noticed a couple oddities:
The noisy brake pads — from the right front wheel — were dramatically more worn than the pads from the left front wheel. I’m talking maybe 1/8" at best remaining on the right, compared to more than 1/4" remaining on the left… ah heck, howabout a picture?
The second thing I noticed while we had the wheels off was that the right front tire was also considerably more worn than the left front tire. I found a Les Schwab receipt in the glove compartment showing that a previous owner of the car purchased both of those tires at the same time - they’re identical except that the right tire is about 50% more worn than the left one. The wear on the right tire is perfectly even all the way around and across, which I believe rules out under/overinflation or an unbalanced wheel. It simply looks like it has about 10,000 more miles on it that the other tire.
What could cause such dramatically uneven wear between the left and right sides? I should note that the right side is also the side where I just had the axle replaced - could the old, bad axle have contributed to this? The only reason I had it replaced was that I’d noticed the boot was torn while swapping out my studded tires, and Les Schwab didn’t mention any other problems with it when they did the work. However, as I’m perhaps the fifth owner of this car I have no idea just how long that axle was bad before I had it replaced (I’ve only had the car since late November '07 and I’d be surprised if I’ve put even 1,000 miles on it since then).
I wonder if the brake on the right was dragging. That would explain the uneven wear, and if it were severe enough I suppose it might actually cause the tire to drag a bit at low speeds.
It seems like you’d notice that though; the car would handle like crap. Perhaps somebody who knows what the hell they’re talking about would like to take a stab at that theory?
As to the brake pads, some degree of wear variation from side to side is not unusual, even with no detectable problem (e.g. sticking caliper). However, there are conditions that can contribute to this without causing noticeable brake drag or pull. If the caliper slides don’t move easily, they should be cleaned and lubricated (this typically causes more wear on just the inboard pad). Another factor is the ability of the pads to easily slide on their mountings - said mountings should always be cleaned smooth, and the parts of the pads that touch them should be lubricated with high-temp grease. That said, the wear variation in the picture does not alarm me, I’ve seen plenty of cars with that much variation but nothing that needs to be fixed or replaced related to it. Of course, I always check the caliper slides and clean/grease the pad-to-mounting interface, even wear or not.
As to the tire wear, that’s anybody’s guess. I can’t think of a plausible relation to the brake wear. My first thought is the more worn tire wasn’t rotated while the other one was, but that’s a somewhat farfetched scenario.
The axle wouldn’t have any bearing on either brake or tire wear.
Yeah, I’m not sure where you’d rotate it to, other than to the rear axle on the same side of the car after you’ve bought new tires for the front (assuming it’s still true that radials shouldn’t be rotated to the other side of the car).
The front tires have “LF” and “RF” chalked on the inside sidewalls, and I made sure I put them back on the correct sides when I swapped out my studded tires this Spring.
Since they’re Les Schwab tires and I have a receipt (though I wasn’t the purchaser), maybe I should take the car to them and ask if they can explain it.
As to the brakes, I’ll interpret the responses here to mean that I shouldn’t be too worried. The car handles fine (both before and after the pad change) and I don’t notice any kind of drag one way or the other.
Beats the hell outta me! It’s something I heard from my dad, and maybe in Driver’s Ed, way back when I was a teenager (in the early '80s). I’ve bought a grand total of two sets of tires in my life, on two different cars, and got rid of both cars long before rotating the tires would have been called for (first car just gave up the ghost in 1988 or so; second car was given away a few months after I lost my license to a DUI in 1992 and I elected to stop driving rather than stop drinking). I didn’t own another car until 2006, and in the interim I didn’t see much point in keeping abreast of developments in automotive technology
