Joe Boulay

Well there might be a lot of you out there that know what new and old brake pads look like. For those of you who do not know the difference between the two of them, or what a brake pad even looks like I thought I would give you a little example. In the picture above you can see that the brake pad on the left is nearly worn out as you look at

the area between the red arrows. The brake pad on the right is a brand new one that I am preparing to install, notice how much brake pad material there is between the green arrows. Now if you look once again at the worn out brake pad on the left, you will see a white arrow, this white arrow is pointing at the wear indicator. The wear indicator is actually only a little piece of metal that will contact the brake rotor when the brake pad wears too low. When the wear indicator contacts the brake rotor you will likely hear a screeching noise when you are backing up your vehicle. If you look at the picture below with the white arrow you can see what can happen when you ignore noises in your car. The person that owns this car ignored the wear indicator and it actually broke off and the brake pad went metal on metal . They also ruined the brake calipers on this vehicle as well. So if you have a brake job done and you ask for your old parts hopefully this information will help you better understand what you are looking at.

Ouch! This is what can happen when you ignore your brake pad wear indicator.