Hey...

I've been investigating complaints from my son about some slight "pulsing" in the brakes in our 08 Ranger, which made me suspect the rotors. While I drove the truck myself and couldn't quite sense the "pulsing" to be as severe as my son suggested, a visual inspection of the rotors indicated the driver-side rotor to be rather significantly scored - easily sensed with the "back of the fingernail" trick. Not just a single score, but several "ridges," almost as if a prior pad replacement went too long and the brads in the backing material came in contact with the rotor surface. In contrast, the passenger side rotor was smooth.

Given the one rotor appears to me to be toast, and we don't have any other service history for the vehicle (used/new-to-us), I think I'm just going to go ahead and replace the pads, rotors, and bearings across the front.

Does the obviously dissimilar rotor wear suggest anything else worth considering other than the pad going too far? And does the path of replacement as I described seem reasonable? Truck has 73K miles on it, and 3K of those are ours.

Thanks,
Dave

 

Could be a bad pad depends on how much the previous owner rode the brakes my stock pads lasted 90k and had decent life left in them when i changed them out but its all about the driver. Also its pretty open in there i got some fine road gravel up in mine and it cut groves in the rotor like what your describing so that may be the issue for you.

 

Thought I'd update this thread just for information's sake.

Went ahead and replaced both front rotors and all the pads. Turns out the inside face of the passenger side was just as scored as the outside of the driver's side. The pads, although fairly new, had already taken on the scoring from the rotor, so its hard to know if the previous driver let pads go too far and score the rotor, replaced the pads, then let the scored rotor scar the pads, or what.

To be sure, the left-front wheel had been worked on before - it didn't have the same axle/bearing packing grease as the right-front wheel.

Anyway, I put in the new rotors and pads, and after having driven it quite a bit over the last few days I think the pulsing is gone. Think we're in good shape!

 

I'd replace the glide pins and rubber bushing then grease them. The caliper is not squeezing on both sides of the rotor like it should.The lower glide pin has a small sleeve that fits over the pin near the end that goes into the caliper bracket. It brakes down or swells to a point that it wont let the caliper close evenly so the in side pad does all the work. Don't use a syntheti lube, someone posted his findings that the synthetic lube cause the sleeve to swell. You can't get these things just about anywhere. Some say they change them every time they do the brakes, I just did mine last year at 47,000 miles and lube them every time I rotate the tires. GM has the same set up and I found a "Service Bulliten" on it about the problems they cause if not greased often.