Well the woes continue with my wife’s 2000 Maxima SE. I will spare you all the details but we have been through a lot with her front brakes.

Here is the current situation…

Car has 95K on it. I would say around the 65K mark I put basic brembo rotors on the car with “updated” stock Nissan pads. This setup worked longer then the stock rotors and pads had for us in the past. My wife then told me that the car was once again shaking when slowing down from high way speeds, so I took off the rotors and went to have them cut. The place I took them too said that the rotors could not be cut due to heat and stress marks. I put the car back together so my wife could drive it while I thought about what I was going to do to fix the issue. When I put all the original parts back on the front brakes started making a grinding noise, almost like the sound of grinding keys, from both sides! I then took the calipers and rotors off took a look and saw nothing out of the ordinary so I put it back together again, and still had the noise. I then decided to try new rotors, calipers, and pads. Once all the new parts were in the noise was still there. I took a look at the dust shields and found one to be close to the rotor but not actually touching. I bent it a little bit further out of the way just in case, but the noise was still present. I can hear the noise while the car is on a jack with the front tire off. All I have to do is spin the rotor and I hear the noise. To make sure it was not anything in the drive train I removed the rotor and spun the front hub and the noise was gone. Once I put the rotor and caliper back on, my noise was back. The noise is coming from the fact that the front pads are just slightly rubbing against the rotor at all times on both sides. What could be causing this? Could it be that the bearings in the front hubs are bad and the rotor is sitting just a tiny bit tilted? Could it be the carrier that holds the caliper to the car, could it be stress bent from all the work we have had done to the brakes?

Does anyone have any suggestions of have a similar situation?

Thanks for any and all help!

John

 

Had a similiar situation with my rear brakes. The problem i had was that the caliper piston was not positioned correctly and the sliding pins were binding. The piston face looks like a star and it has to be positioned correctly to allow the nub from the brake pads to rest in between the piston face. For the pins, i took them off with the boots and cleaned/replaced the synthetic grease. After doing all this the grinding/overheating problem went away.

Hope this helps.

 

You may know these already but just saying it as a check list kinda thing:
- Did you hook back the resistance clips in the loop on the back side of each of the pads (it helps push back the pads from the rotr after the brake is released)

- Check if the caliper is binding (with the front of the car on jackstands and the hand brake up place the car in nuetral and have an assistant press the brake while u turn the rotor with ur hand, after the assistant releases the brake it should go back to the same turning resistance before they pressed the brake)

- check list from piston to outer caliper arm
(piston->chrome shim->anti-squeal grease->inner shim->anti-squeal->inner pad->rotor ->outer pad->anti-squeak->outer shim->anti squeal->chrome shim->caliper arm)

We have a free floating brake design, so yes the pads practically glides/rides against the rotor even when the brakes are not depressed.

hope that helps

 

Thanks for the feed back so far. I drove the car about 75 miles yesterday on the brand new rotors with the grinding noise. I took the brakes apart and noticed on the back of the rotor a wear line already developing from only 75 miles.

Does anyone know where I can get an exploded view of the front brake system? I guess I could call Nissan and have them fax it over?