What causes Brakes to squeak or grind?

What causes brakes to squeak or grind? Welcome to Mercie J, where compassion and craftsmanship come together. I'm Rick Smith, Master Certified Technician.

So first of all it's kind of interesting to know that all brakes actually do squeak. The squeak is a high frequency vibration of the brake pad, kind of like a guitar string if you will. The vehicle manufacturers try to design that so it's actually outside of the human audible range.

So anytime we have a problem with some hardware or maybe a problem with the manufacturing of the pad or maybe when someone does the brakes they don't do a very good job and get things dirty, then those brakes can start to vibrate within the human audible range. That's how we end up getting a squeak.

A grinding noise typically is because we've allowed them to wear too far and now instead of brake pad material against a metal rotor we have what's called metal to metal and so that's grinding. Sometimes we can have grinding under different temperatures if there's a high metallic content in the brake pad itself.

I hope it's been informational to you and until next time, safe travels and blessings to you.