After hearing a rather nasty grinding noise on my truck last night, I drove
home and took the rear tires/drums off. There was a good amount of dust
buildup in the drums and around the shoes. I fired up the air compressor and
blew everything out. I also lightly went over the drums and shoes with some
sandpaper, just cause they looked glazed a bit. The shoes had plenty left,
probably good till the spring. I put ther drums and rear tires back on and
jack the front up and took the front tires off. The passenger's side front
was completely shot and dug pretty good into the rotors. Since I have had
the rotors turned twice already, I was hoping they still were thick enough
to have one more turn left on them. Well I took the rotors into the machine
shop tonight and they were too thin, so I had to buy new rotors, no big
deal. The driver's side pads were ok and looked like they still had a few
months left on them. However, the passenger's side pads were shot, I mean
both inboard and outboard were shot, thus causing the grinding noise. I dug
out the receipts for the pads, which I bought at Autozone. I paid $24 for
the fronts(Lifetime warranty) in December 1998. I looked on my log
maintainance book and I only got 30,000 miles out of these pads, compared to
40,000 from the previous set. I went into Autozone and wanted to try to
upgrade to a better brake pad. I walked out with some Nascar super duper
truck pads, which were like $42....so I just paid the difference. I talked
with the manager and he said the pads should have lasted alot longer than
that. He claims they are their best pad and the best pad they have ever
sold, and should last for 50,000 miles(yeah right!). So I lubed up the
caliper slide pins, and slapped the nice thick rotors on along with the
rather beefy looking new pads. Only took me like a total of 45 minutes
yesterday and like 45 minutes tonight of labor work. I vacuumed out the
older brake fluid from the master cylinder and filled it up with some fresh
DOT3 fluid and took it out for a spin......and to adjust the rear brakes.
All in all, it was a very fast and simple brake job. I just wish the braked
wore like my brother 97 Ranger.......he got 67,000 miles out of his front
pads and 72,000 on the rear shoes!..........but I would still rather have my
Dakota and have to do brake changes every 30,000 miles. Thankfully though,
my Dodge is alot easier to work on than his. Cant beat an hour brake job. Oh
well........
Kyle
93 Dakota 4x4 V6
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