Squealling brakes....

[Mrs Scoobington]

Hello there

So....has anyone experienced brake noise on the Yaris Cross?  Mine seem to be rather vocal in their displeasure at being awoken at times, emitting something akin to one of those Mandrake plants in Harry Potter (or a piglet being dragged from the trough for those not au fait with HP).  I did notice another Cross with attention seeking brakes when it pulled up at a pedestrian crossing I was at recently, so wondered if this was part of the 'character' of the car or simply a seasonal trait.

Many thanks in advance.   

[TonyHSD]

Any chance it’s the avas noise instead of the brakes? This funny sounds like an ufo 🛸 when driving slowly? 

[YarisHybrid2016]

I can't say I heard squealing from ours, but the GR Sport I had for test drive had some brake squeal at low speed. Not sure if they're the same brake units between the two.

[anchorman]

Yes mine make a noise.  I was 17 years in research and development of brake pads (hence the forum name) and that noise isn’t going to be easy to cure without a change of pad material.  It’s a low speed groan caused by the pad material not being abrasive enough.  It doesn’t really concern me but it could well lead to brake judder with miles.  Time will tell.  

[TonyHSD]

One trick how to stop brake noises and make your brakes work really well and quiet is to wash the car and leave it for a day without any use.
Here is what to do: 
Disengage the parking brake and leave the car in P.  
Spray some TFR or any  other non acid wheel cleaner on the wheels including brake discs and pads and callipers, let the chemicals work for 3-5 min not under direct sunlight of course and then wash thoroughly with jet wash. Give it a soft brush or soapy mitt with regular car shampoo on the wheels, if you prefer deep wash with brushes all is up to you and then rinse again with water. Complete your car wash and leave the car at least for overnight without driving.  
Next day the disc surfaces should be covered equally in thin yellowish colour, the normal corrosion but this is the important thing.
Start driving as normal and be more gentle on the brakes in the next few stops, similarly to when new pads bed in process. This thin layer corrosion is very abrasive and will polish your discs and pads friction surfaces and will make your brakes sharp and quieter. 👍 Works every time for me. 

[bathtub tom]

Alternatively, when you're on a quiet piece of road at around 50MPH or so and there's nothing behind you, apply the brakes hard. That'll remove any 'glaze'.

[anchorman]

Both of the above are very short term fixes.  

[Stivino]

23 minutes ago, anchorman said:

Both of the above are very short term fixes.  

I think you are being very generous.

[anchorman]

9 minutes ago, Stivino said:

I think you are being very generous.

You see right through me, ok, they’re both a waste of time.  

[YarisHybrid2016]

I checked ours...it squeaks below 2 MPH.

[TonyHSD]

6 hours ago, YarisHybrid2016 said:

I checked ours...it squeaks below 2 MPH.

That’s pretty normal especially for any car with automatic transmission. 

[bathtub tom]

10 hours ago, anchorman said:

Both of the above are very short term fixes.  

I agree, but a lot cheaper than paying to have new discs and pads fitted (that may not solve the problem).

[TonyHSD]

10 hours ago, anchorman said:

You see right through me, ok, they’re both a waste of time.  

Well for someone maybe a waste of time, for others it’s a problem solver. Everyone is free to choose from which one they want to be.
Thank you both for your comments and thoughts about these tips 👍

[Guest]

15 hours ago, TonyHSD said:

Disengage the parking brake and leave the car in P.  

Very important. I didn't do that, once only, with rear drum brakes after washing the car. Below zero that night and the residue water inside the drums must have frozen. I suspect my neighbours must have wondered if my mind had done a runner! Drove the car up and down the street a short way, forwards and reverse, with both rear wheels not moving - bang, bang (yes, two brakes)  - sudden release.

That little excercise threw up an ABS fault and taught me never to do the same again, with regards the handbrake, after washing the car.

[Phil T]

It's the Kevlar that replaced asbestos that makes that awful noise. Toyotas mix seems a lot worse than other makes. I can play tunes 😱 by easing off the brakes minutely at the lights, get some worried looks. The Rav and both Prius' all made some sort of squeal.

Brembo EBC or Mintex pads should cure the noise.

A few of my Japanese motorbikes had the same problems, changing the pads cured the noise. I used to scare the hell out of my mates if we rode in a group, pull up alongside with screaming brakes 🤣

[anchorman]

6 hours ago, Phil T said:

It's the Kevlar that replaced asbestos that makes that awful noise. Toyotas mix seems a lot worse than other makes. I can play tunes 😱 by easing off the brakes minutely at the lights, get some worried looks. The Rav and both Prius' all made some sort of squeal.

Brembo EBC or Mintex pads should cure the noise.

A few of my Japanese motorbikes had the same problems, changing the pads cured the noise. I used to scare the hell out of my mates if we rode in a group, pull up alongside with screaming brakes 🤣

They haven’t used Kevlar in OE brake pads for years Phil.  When I was at Ferodo they were paying about £200 a tonne for asbestos and Kevlar was £16-20k a tonne depending on the dollar.  They use Rockwool to replace asbestos in brake shoes but pads use steel as a fibre.   Your comment about alternative materials I’m guessing has little science to it (you might be a pad manufacturer for all I know) but ironically could do exactly as you say and cure them.  Anybody that pays a premium for EBC is nuts in my opinion.  They are fantastic at placebos but have never succeeded in meeting OE standards.  

[anchorman]

7 hours ago, TonyHSD said:

Well for someone maybe a waste of time, for others it’s a problem solver. Everyone is free to choose from which one they want to be.
Thank you both for your comments and thoughts about these tips 👍

Don’t be offended our Tony.  As you said the rust will stop it but the first trip out the rust is gone and you’re back to square one.  

[anchorman]

8 hours ago, bathtub tom said:

I agree, but a lot cheaper than paying to have new discs and pads fitted (that may not solve the problem).

Absolutely.  Changing them for the same pads and discs will do the same again.  

[TonyHSD]

No offence taken. 
I use EBC Ultimax which are the normal pads and they work really well for me. They seems softer than some others I used previously and add a nice grab to the brake pedal feel, better  than the oem pads imo.
They are not producing any more dust, last long too, but in hybrids they all will do for obvious reasons.  They also smell right , I am not an expertise in brake parts but when been in the trade and ”Textar” were the best in business they had very similar smell. 
Here how they look after 88k miles fronts, I didn’t measured them but they seemed almost as good as new. Rears will need change soon  👍

[anchorman]

2 hours ago, TonyHSD said:

No offence taken. 
I use EBC Ultimax which are the normal pads and they work really well for me. They seems softer than some others I used previously and add a nice grab to the brake pedal feel, better  than the oem pads imo.
They are not producing any more dust, last long too, but in hybrids they all will do for obvious reasons.  They also smell right , I am not an expertise in brake parts but when been in the trade and ”Textar” were the best in business they had very similar smell. 
Here how they look after 88k miles fronts, I didn’t measured them but they seemed almost as good as new. Rears will need change soon  👍

EBC do a remarkable job of marketing and get people to cough up extortionate amounts for what are essentially ordinary pads.  You can play tricks with friction materials just by double baking (expensive in production) or scorching the surface.  Double baking completes the curing of the resin system so they tend to be more stable and scorching tends to open the surface.  This tends to kick the friction which tricks the user for a short time and by the time it wears through, they’ve forgotten what they felt at first.  I think they might do ceramic pads which can be very expensive but they don’t really suite normal use.  Textar is one of the premier European friction manufacturers that supply a lot of vehicle builders.  Their bog standard off the shelf products meet all European standards and the vehicle manufacturers standards.   

[Cyker]

Don't they still use 'kevlar'? A lot of brake manufactures like to talk about aramid fibres used in their pads, which is basically un-branded kevlar.

I'm told they are kinder to brake discs than ones that uses e.g. steel fibres or sintered ceramics.

I used to use EBC greenstuffs on my old diesel Yaris, found them to be adequate - Quiet, good bite from cold, but a bit soft and wore out fairly quickly with all the stop-start traffic. Also produced a lot of dust, which was a bit annoying since the whole reason I got them was for the lower dust!! Wanted to go back to the factory akebono ceramic pads as they were virtually dust free and much better, which my old dealer supplied, but when they closed down and merged to the new site the new dealer kept giving me textar 'optifit' pads instead which were worse than the EBCs (Lasted longer but not as bitey, more expensive and even dustier!). Was looking to try some Ferodo or Mintex ones next but the car got KHAAAAN'd before I had the chance...

 

[Phil T]

 

5 hours ago, anchorman said:

They haven’t used Kevlar in OE brake pads for years Phil.  When I was at Ferodo they were paying about £200 a tonne for asbestos and Kevlar was £16-20k a tonne depending on the dollar.  They use Rockwool to replace asbestos in brake shoes but pads use steel as a fibre.   Your comment about alternative materials I’m guessing has little science to it (you might be a pad manufacturer for all I know) but ironically could do exactly as you say and cure them.  Anybody that pays a premium for EBC is nuts in my opinion.  They are fantastic at placebos but have never succeeded in meeting OE standards.  

When I was assisting in pit lane for my friends plenty of teams were using EBC and were sponsored by other brands.  “Hide the boxes” Perhaps things move on.

[anchorman]

46 minutes ago, Cyker said:

Don't they still use 'kevlar'? A lot of brake manufactures like to talk about aramid fibres used in their pads, which is basically un-branded kevlar.

I'm told they are kinder to brake discs than ones that uses e.g. steel fibres or sintered ceramics.

I used to use EBC greenstuffs on my old diesel Yaris, found them to be adequate - Quiet, good bite from cold, but a bit soft and wore out fairly quickly with all the stop-start traffic. Also produced a lot of dust, which was a bit annoying since the whole reason I got them was for the lower dust!! Wanted to go back to the factory akebono ceramic pads as they were virtually dust free and much better, which my old dealer supplied, but when they closed down and merged to the new site the new dealer kept giving me textar 'optifit' pads instead which were worse than the EBCs (Lasted longer but not as bitey, more expensive and even dustier!). Was looking to try some Ferodo or Mintex ones next but the car got KHAAAAN'd before I had the chance...

 

Aramid refers more to the way the fibres are produced rather than what they are made from.  Kevlar gets used in body armour still but when I left Ferodo in 2003 we didn’t use any that I remember.  There might have been small quantities in Research but none in production I don’t think.  Asbestos fibres used to form a framework to hold the material together and being cheap could be used at around 60% making them very strong.  The trick in getting rid of it was to replace that amount of fibre and to do it with Kevlar would push the cost to an unacceptable level.  The direct asbestos free equivalent when I left was Rockwool which was also man made.  You probably recognise it as loft insulation but there are many different grades.  That’s all good for linings (still used quite a lot for rear brakes or parking brakes) but you need tremendous shear strength in a pad so you’ll see a lot of steel fibre (and get it in your fingers if you’re not careful).  Steel isn’t a bad friction material but it isn’t stable so they modify it with abrasive to up the friction and carbon to lower and lubricate it which is what turns your front wheels black.   Pads work quite well up to about 600c but then you start to struggle with the bond to the backplate.  The chemicals that make them do different things at different temperatures.   Getting performance is no longer a problem but getting the manufacturer refinement and meeting legal standards is and that is where all the development cost goes these days.  You need some wear or you end up with noise or brake judder and other snags.  Some people hate brake dust but it doesn’t bother me.  Be careful with the terms hard or soft, if you measure the hardness of a pad that wears a lot it isn’t necessarily soft, it’s just abrasive.  

[anchorman]

5 minutes ago, Phil T said:

 

When I was assisting in pit lane for my friends plenty of teams were using EBC and were sponsored by other brands.  “Hide the boxes” Perhaps things move on.

Yeah, they have a reputation for having performance but performance or pure friction won’t cut it in legal terms.  They have to be stable throughout a temperature range and through a stop (not climb or drop under a steady brake pressure).   Once they’ve done that, they repeat it and see what the first duty cycle did to the second.  Then they’ll fade them under extreme temperatures and after it held its performance they’ll see what that did to the performance when cold again.  There is no longer a requirement for life.  A ratio of two sets of pads to a set of discs is considered acceptable and if it’s one to one that is no longer a warranty issue - you can knock a set of pads out very quickly if you push them.  I’m not knocking EBC, many swear by them but to my knowledge, they don’t sell to vehicle manufacturers and to be honest they probably don’t need the grief that goes with it when people will pay a premium for coloured paint.  I just go for one of the big brands if I ever get to wearing a set out before I weaken and waste more money on a new car!

[Phil T]

Anchorman you should be giving lectures. I like your explanation of the black art of brake pads, following the flock is not that advisable when your doing it on others limited knowledge. I’m sure a lot of racers would benefit from your experience. Not one for buying pads these days, gave up the bikes last year I was forced into new pads on the Prius phev, the rears corroded beyond mot limits after 3 years, not a warranty part 🤬. Mintex was my brand of choice, on my VW cars they often replaced Pagid, frightening difference on one Passat! Ferodo on the bikes. I tried SBS and one set fell apart, never trusted them again. On a 400cc scooter the front pads were down to the metal before the 600 mile service. The replacements lasted 10000 miles 🤨

Do Ferodo still have a presence in UK I see that pads appear to be all Italian made.