When I bought my truck used, it already had a new set of General Grabber AW tires on them In my opinoin these have to be the worst gripping tires ever. Anyway, I replaced my rotors and pads about 2 months ago and I am now hearing (and feeling)a grinding sound when I slowly come to a stop. It almost feels as if I had no pads left and the rotors were grinding metal on metal. My tires now have almost 60K on them and I do think its time for some REVOS. I have looked at the outer surface of both rotors and there are no gouges/grooves. I plan on checking the inner surfaces on Turkey day. Could the tires be causing the grinding noise - maybe the belts gone bad?

 

Nope. Not very likely that bad tires are the source of the problem. Sounds like you have metal to metal grinding, and the most likely source would be the brakes. Either something has worked it's way loose, there's something jammed between the pad and the rotor, or you have some defective pads (not very likely). Check the brakes and you'll find your source.

 

I had the same problem on my rig a while back and it was the calipers grinding on the back side of the rims. Check and make sure your calipers are not grinding on the backside of the rims and that you have some clearance there on both sides. I could feel it in the brake pedal, in the steering wheel and I could hear it. I figure that I only noticed it at slow speeds it was only at slow speeds that everything else is minimized and not muted by the normal rumblings of the engine/body/frame etc at higher speeds.

Hope you find the problem and get it fixed!

 

What would cause the calipers to start rubbing? I never replaced them.

 

Didn't you say you replaced the rotors? Calipers sit on the rotors so they got moved when you changed the rotors and they might have had a real close fit to the rims to begin with and now that they were moved they might be rubbing. All you have to do is look on the calipers and see if you see any scraped places. I'm by no means an expert, just an idea.

 

Yes I replaced the rotors, but the calipers never move. They always remain in the same place because they are mounted to the control arms with the two bolts. The rotors install between the calipers. Something else must have happened to your calipers that caused them to move. I will check to make sure my calipers aren't rubbing though when I take the tires off.

 

I got new rims and the clearance was too tight for the backspacking and that is why my calipers rubbed. It would depend on which rim was on front as some rubbed and some did not. I was thinking that might be your problem. Sorry for the confusion as I kind of thought that you had just got the used rig recently and had changed the rotors and had to take off the tires so you might have rotated them and with different rims in different spots that might be the cause of your grinding, rims on the calipers.

I sure hope you find the source of your culprit and sorry I couldn't be more help!

 

Hey no problem, thanks for the info anyways. I still have the stock rims, and I have rotated the tires several times with no rubbing problems. I sure hope it isnt something stuck between the pads and rotors. When I replaced them, I put on Toyota OEM pads and rotors ($$$), so I hope I don't need to replace on of them again.

 

Yesterday I took the wheels off and inspected the brake pads and rotors. They are as smooth as a baby's ass, so that can't be the casue of the problem. I checked out the tires really well and I noticed that on the inner side of the tires has a 3 inch spot that feels wavy on the tire that I suspected was bad. The wavy spot is about 1 inch away from the rim. Could this mean that the belt is broken as I initially thought?