Just a little story I feel the need to share:

Several days ago my wife told me her brakes on her Mountaineer were making
some noise. I drove it to the store the next evening and sure enough, there
came a godawful grinding noise whenever the brakes were applied; it also
sounded like there was a little noise just rolling along at a crawl, too.
Not good. I got home, eyeballed the rotors thru the slots in the wheels,
didn't see anything. (Then again, it was about dark, so there.) I waited a
bit to let the rotors cool down (learned a year or so ago to do that the
hard way) and ran my finger across one of the rears and felt a definite
groove. uh-oh. So I tell her be careful, I'll fix it this weekend.

I went yesterday and picked up new pads and rotors for the rear (fronts were
done several months ago).  This morning, jacked up the back end, pulled off
the wheels, loosened caliper bolts, and started to pull off the
calipers...and then noticed the problem. The caliper wouldn't come off.
While the outside of one rear rotor was slightly grooved, the inside pads on
both sides were completely, totally, gone...nothing but shiny metal gouging
into the rotor.

I felt a little sick then and actually more so now. I've been working a ton
the last year or so, and didn't realize the mileage she's racked up, and it
just never crossed my mind...but looking at what was supposed to be the
brakes on the vehicle my kids ride in everyday was nauseating. How long had
it been like that??? Not only that, but I let her drive it on friday. makes
me want to crawl under a rock.

Anyway, posting this here is sort of like preaching to the choir, but if
there's any vehicle at your house that the brakes haven't just been done on,
when was it done? It might be a little bit longer ago than you think.

wabbitslayer
01 GT vert