About a month ago I noticed more brake dust building up on the drivers side front wheel than on the passenger front wheel. This happened after an autox and I didn't think much of it, thinking maybe the course was harder on one side with regards to braking. Today I looked at the front driver side brake pad and it is worn substantially more than the passenger side. I believe this just started due just noticing the change in brake dust build up. What could cause this? What should check?

I am running Carbotech XP6 pads on the front of the car. I put them back on about 4 months ago. I ran those same pads last year, but had swapped to stock for the winter. When I put the XP6s back on this year, they were worn equally (had the same thickness.)

thanks in advance.

 

grab the caliper and push it from drivers side to passengers side rapidly and see if it moves freely . if it wont move .your sliders could be froze . if it moves pull caliper and see if piston will readily retract with tool . if piston frozen then there you go you need caliper . if not well you gotta look for air in passenger side line . car pull at all ?

 

As Herbie said, could be a frozen or possibly a stiff caliper, and also could be the flexible brake hose on that side. These things have an internal liner that can delaminate. You push the brake pedal and send fluid pressure to the caliper, then release the pedal and the delaminated inner hose liner traps the pressure in the line for a while, keeping the brakes on. If you put a pressure gauge into the bleeder port, you will get a quck yes or no.

I know it sounds strange and not a high probability, but I have had this happen to two separate cars in my lifetime (I'm old), so it can happen, just something to check. And when chasing down these sorts of problems, you must check everything, if you don't it will always turn out to be the thing that you never thought would cause the problem and didn't check early.

YD

 

I had time to better look into the situation and it is a good news/bad news story.

The bad news: there is a slight tear in the drivers side dust boot and there is a bigger tear in the passenger side one

The good news (for both sides). The calipers move back and forth freely. I could easily push the piston in. Everything is back together and lubed better than before.

Brake pad (including mounting pad) thickness:
Drivers outer: 12.1mm inner: 13.0mn
Passenger outer:13.8mm inner: 13.6
Both roters: 21mm

So now the questions. How urgent is getting this fixed? What causes this to happen? My car is a 2006 with only about 14,000 miles on it. How do get the brake line off/on from the caliper (stock lines) in order to replace the caliper? Where is a good place to get rebuilt calipers (MCS 2006)?

Thanks again

Herbie, the car never pulled under braking. Actually the brakes have been feeling great. YD, hopefully what you are describing isn't the issue as the car isn't that old and I don't have the equipment to test that.

 

if piston is free and sliders are free and car isnt pulling to good side . i'd say leave it alone . you dont need a caliper . you may have some air in system on bad side , but if it works well leave it .

 

piston should have retracted effortlessly . if same as passenger , bleed both sides to equal things up . if dust is much more on drivers' it had to of been dragging one way or another . so you lubed all up . give it a try for a while before you drop money on a caliper .