Have you ever wondered why brake pads don’t always wear perfectly evenly? It’s not a big mystery, and Fountain City Auto Clinic is here with some information that can help.
Brake Lines and Calipers Aren’t Always Working Properly
It helps to understand how your brake system works. Brake fluid flows into the brake lines to each individual brake assembly, where the pressure provided by the brake fluid causes the calipers to squeeze the brake pads against the rotors. If there’s a problem with getting the fluid where it needs to be or the calipers themselves are malfunctioning, that means that they won’t apply even pressure to the brake pads and they’ll wear unevenly.
Brake Pad Alignment Makes a Difference
Brake pads themselves can be part of the problem, too. If they’re aligned incorrectly, they won’t match up correctly with the rotors. Brake pads can be aligned perfectly and something can mess with that. An accident or some other problem can cause the brake pads to have trouble meeting up properly with the rotors, again contributing to uneven wear.
Rotors Get Funky
As you drive your car, your car is exposed to weather and to the elements. Over time, that causes corrosion on certain parts that aren’t protected, like your brake rotors. As the rotors and the brake pads make contact, it’s not always perfectly even and the brake pads are the weaker of the two parts, so they may experience the more uneven wear patterns.
They Also Don’t Start Out Perfect
But something else to remember is that brake rotors, like other parts of your car, don’t start out perfect from the get-go. They’re designed to exacting specifications, of course, but they’re still not perfect. Combine that with naturally occurring imperfections in the brake pads, too, and you’re going to see uneven wear eventually. Brake pads, and rotors to a lesser extent, are consumable pieces of the car. They wear away gradually as you use them, and that sometimes means it happens at an uneven rate.
Are your brakes doing something new and confusing? Don’t mess around with your car’s brakes. Contact us today at Fountain City Auto Clinic in Knoxville, TN. We’ll take a closer look at your brakes and make sure that all of the various parts are working the way that they should be. If there is anything wrong, we’ll let you know exactly what your brakes need.