2003 Silverado Brakes

The caliper slide on that wheel is frozen. The piston side pad is doing all the braking thus that side is worn on the disk. Also, if you are not using OEM parts, you really don't know what you are getting. My local shop tells me that the aftermarket parts situation is very poor with most of the parts made in Mexico or China. Often times the new parts are crap and not as good as the parts taken off. He will use nothing but OEM parts and gets normal life on brake jobs. If a customer wants something else, he will install it, but will not warranty the parts.

If you use OEM parts and do a proper job of cleaning and lubing the caliper slides, your brakes will perform as they should.

Randy

The rotors I am referring to were the original on the truck

V.B.

IIRC there is a TSB on this issue, some problem with one side. Not all aftermarket parts are bad, if your careful, raybestos brake pads for example.

As another poster stated, there was probably another issue that caused the one-sided wear. Having said that, why do you think that 93k / 3 years is premature wear? Even if the inside had not disintegrated, you might need to change them anyway.

maybe because its only got 57,000 miles on it, he stated 93,000 KMS.. I tend to agree with the main line or reasoning, caliper housing froze up on slides, inboard pad doing all the work. This would have been caught before the failure he experienced if the vehicle was getting serviced as it should be. I am not a fan of 4 wheel disc brakes, never have been. I don't feel they stop as well as disc/drum combo. And, especially as open as the rear wheel wells of a truck are, the rear disc set up seems to get clobbered by snow, ice, salt and garbage much worse than the front discs do. Fixed mount multi-piston calipers such as those used on early corvettes don't seem to suffer as much from this problem, but then they are more sensitive to warpage, and tend to be noisier. One of the reasons you can hear a volvo ten miles away when the driver hits the brakes. As to aftermarket, there is good and bad, and price is an indicator. Raybestos is as good as anything the OEM has to offer, perhaps because they make alot of OEM. Wagner upper end is good. NAPA wears like iron, but were always noise makers. On the other hand store brand garbage like the discount five and dime auto parts wanna be places sell are lousy.

Whitelightning

I know he said KM. Many vehicles require rotor replacement or machining by the time that mileage / age has been reached.

Never had any experience with 4W discs, but always seemed like a good idea, theoretically.

The real reason is that people who buy Volvos are so safety concious that they drivve at 20 mph on the freeway, riding the brakes and gas at the same time, deathly afraid that even their oh-so-safe Volvo won't protect them when that iminent, inevitable accident happens in the next 5 seconds LOL.

I swear, the slowest most infuriating drivers on the road drive Volvos.

(Side rant, sue me LOL)

Well my vote is for old people in Buicks. They are the slowest and the worst around here.

Bob

As I stated in my original post, I was told by an expert that what happened to the rotor SHOULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED. The caliper pistons were working good. I have a couple of friends with GM trucks with 4 disk brakes, and they are over 140,000kms. And as I have stated, most of my mileage was highway mileage, not hard on brakes.

V.B.

The only thing I know of that will make one side wear out way ahead of the other is a caliper that wont move on its mounts or pads not moving on the slides. The piston moves or the inboard wouldn't be gone. So ether the caliper housing is hanging on its mount not moving freely so the piston pushes the inboard pad against the rotor, but the caliper housing doesn't move and as such the outboard pad doesn't get applied, or in some designs if it uses a bridge mount, where the pads ride on the caliper mount, the outboard pad can hang up if rust builds up on the mount where the pads ride. This design can also hang up the inboard pad, and wear in outboard out.

There is one other thing can happen. Every now and then , like once every fifth blue moon, you will end up with three pads with lining material from one batch, and the fourth pad from a different batch. I got in the habit of looking at the batch markings on the pads.

Whitelightning

Too late this time, but I'll get in the habit of doing that too next time.

V.B.

Thanks for the tip Whitelightning, good one.