Bringing in the 5,700 Mile old SS to get her rear brakes looked at and hopefully fixed this friday.

She squeks REAL BAD, the worse ive ever heard on any car ever, and when they are absolutely spotless clean and dont squek cuz they are still wet they make a low grinding noise *in which i can see and feel grooves starting to form*.

So I just drove it to the dealership today *not where i bought it* and the guy apparently knew about it so I was pretty happy about that.

Lets see how it goes and what they tell me, the grinding is new but i know its the doorstep to more problems, and the grooves are still pretty fresh but hopefully they dont tell me to wait till the rotors are shot till they fix em.

 

mine sqeaked too around that milage. i work for a dealer and they wouldnt let me do anything under warrenty. I turned the rotors and sanded the pads on my own free time. it got rid of the sqeak for a while. But now im at 15,000 miles and just did a oil change yesterday and figured i would take the rear tires off and look at the brake cause i can hear grinding again. The right side inside pad is about gone and the left side is not to far behid. The rotors are alson grooved like crazy. i have new rotors and pads that will be here friday under warrenty

garrett

 

Dead topic. Took mine in at 4k,10K, and now at 13K and im going to take it in again. Each time they told me it was the wrong pads. So they're telling me pretty much that the wrong pads were put on at the factory, and then the two other times the "fixed" it...

 

ya not exactly the encouragement I was looking for, But hopefully something happens.

Im thinking because the one rotor has some visible grooves on the OUTSIDE of the rotor along with the inside they will do SOMETHING, or at least change my pads to stop the squealing.

How much do R1's run??

 

if they put new pads on it, they either need to turn the rotors or give you new ones, cause it will come right back

 

At 14k miles my dealer replaced the rear rotors and pads under warranty.They did have the owner look at it, and approve the warranty work though.That dealer has only sold 2 SS's one is in my garage,the other is in my dad's.So not a whole lot of them come in for service.

 

Hey OP my car's doing the same exact thing. I've got just under 4,000 miles on it and they've been sqeaking since brand new...more embarrassing than anything. Like you said, the only time they don't squeak is when they're wet and mine grind like a bastard too..no grooves in mine yet though. If I were to get a set of R1's wouldn't they get scored too? I wanna take it to the dealer to get something done about it but I have a feeling they're just gonna tell me there's nothing they can do about it.

 

My rotors are grooved pretty bad inside and out and my inside pads are almost gone at 14K. Looks like I'm going to a dealer though if they are replacing this stuff under warranty.

 

I mean they should, less than 15k for you and less than 10k for everyone else is not acceptable and normal wear. Thats some crap, But the car is in the garage right now cuz we got like 20 inches of snow so I dont know if i will be able to bring it in friday roads here are pretty shitty for awhile and I have the stock conti's on as I dont drive the car in snow unless its an emergency.

 

why is it that everyone here says the dealers know all about this. every dealer i whent to 3 in fact all said the same thing "ive never heard of the rear brakes makeing noise on the SS" one handed me a TSB for noise while brakeing talking about rust and all that common sense crap, i just replaced them myself, i hate dealers

 

cuz most dealers suck?

I was just as surprised as you that when i walked in there and told them what was going on *Mind you ive only seen one Cobalt SS of ANY kind on their lot ONCE, and it was a TC*. Not only did they know but he explained to me how the rotors were on back order for awhile and that for some time the parts were tricky to get but better now *according to him we all know its still tough*. But I was amazed that he even knew that. Oddly enough I will be there first Stage 1 install so maybe the guy either pays attention, or has a friend or relative etc that has or knows someone with a SS/TC and bitched.

 

I've got the same thing going on too.. my pads are wearing down at an angle too. Strange. I understand that they are "performance" based rotors, but should not be this soft of a metal.

I've looked into R1's. They seem really nice! They did, however, have a few complaints from the G35 drivers. Had few issues with rust on the premium rotors and had the anti rust compound. After breaking down the compound where the pads would be.. the rest should be good. A member took them and put i think 3+ coats of paint on the rest of it and has had 0 rust issues.

 

Well I have 20k on mine and the rotors are grooved on the out side and plenty of meat on the pad. Now the inside is another story. While I was washing my car yesterday I figured I would feel the inside of the rotor as I do from time to time and guess what I felt! DEEP grooves and no pad left on the inside, metal on metal. I asked my dealer about it when I took my car in for service a few months ago and he said there was NOTHING they could do about it cause it is a wear item and it would be all on me. I have no problems doing the brakes myself but I figured this is not driver error do to the fact if I was driving like a jack ass the fronts would be gone and the rears would be ok. The rears should have around double the life span as the fronts and the fronts are nowhere near the end of their life span. At the time I talked to the dealer it felt like I had a little time left before I need to replace them and I was wanting to wait for summer where I will have better weather and might do some hard driving. I can get the rotors from napa for $35 ea and a "premium" pad from autozone for $34. looks like I am doing it this weekend.

 

I have a spare set of rear pads if you need PM me.

 

Well I would love to take you up on that offer but I really need to get to this in the morning before something bad happens. The pad I got from autozone are pretty comparable to stock.

 

I gave up on my dealer. It's pretty cheap just to replace the rotors and pads yourself. I realize it's the principle of the matter we're talking about here, but you get tired of driving to the dealer and waiting around for 2 hours for them to tell you that this is the way "high performance" brakes are supposed to look and act.

 

what the hell... do you all cook your brakes? At a stop on a flat surface do you hold your brakes? do you go fast then brake hard and at a stop stay on the brakes? I only have 7k miles but I've never had this issue....

 

This problem has absolutely nothing to do with the driving style of the car owner.

At 6000kms, my rear rotor started to slightly groove on the right outside surface. Put the car on the hoist and took it apart. The pad material had metallic chunks in it. Metallic chunks that are too big to allow for normal wear. I dug a couple out of the pad and sanded the surface a bit and reinstalled.

Last week, I replaced the pads and rotors on the back. Same thing, large shiny chunks in the oem pads. I went with AC ceramic pads and Raybestos rotors for the replacements.

I didn't bother taking it to the stealership because it wasted less of my time doing it myself at my own shop and I get parts below wholesale.

 

prove that. I've heard the omg rocks get in and the pads are crap. ya fine.. but I still think half of you cant use the brakes right hahah

 

If your brakes are not doing this then consider yourself one of the lucky ones. In the rear, the inboard pad is worn ALOT more than the outboard pad. THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH HOW A PERSON DRIVES!!!!! This means there is a malfunction in the braking system. There are tons of theory's of why these brakes do this. Another theory that I have heard is that from the factory GM did not grease the brake caliper bolts and it is binding somewhat and that is where the problem is coming from. This could be causing the inboard bad to wear more by dragging on the rotor, or contacting the rotor before the outboard pad and applying more force to inboard pad. How true this is I do not know, BUT after reading the post about this issue a new member pulled his calipers off and greased his caliper bolts as soon as he got the car home from the dealer. After thousands of miles his car is not having this issue. Maybe he was one of the lucky one that was never going to have this issue or maybe this fixed it I don't know. It seems worth trying. I would bet that 8 out of 10, 2008-2010 cobalt SS owners will have this problem. ALSO if someone was driving the car to hard the front brakes do most of the work and those would be the first to go. Most(99%) of these people that are having these problems the fronts are looking almost new or normal wear for the amount of miles on the car. So please just don't assume things just because you are one of the VERY few that are not having this problem or have not had this problem YET. Mine started around the 7-10k mark I believe, and just went downhill from there.

 

Prove it? Why the **** would I bother wasting my time posting made up **** on this site?

I saw it with my own two eyes as well as 2 fully licenced AC Delco certified techs that work at my shop. Brake pads are not supposed to have chunks of shiny metal 2-3mm long embedded into them. If you knew anything at all about friction material composition, you wouldn't be arguing.

If I'm wrong, which I'm not then please explain to us how rotors are getting grooved with sets of pads that are not worn down to metal on metal?

Let's see, my 06 G5 GT also had 4 wheel disc and at 35,000kms, the rear pads had about 30% life left. Yep, it most certainly is user error with the TC brakes.

It is true, the caliper slide pins are not greased from the factory. When I first took mine apart at 6000kms to see why my rotors were grooved, they were dry.

But at 12000kms when I replaced the pads and rotors, the right side inner pad had about 50% wear left compared to about 75% for all the others.

 

I greased the **** out of my caliper bolts and I should have taken pics of the bolt but there was defiantly some binding going on. There was some black smudges on the end that would not come off like it had binded and grooved it a bit. The car is braking better and coasting better with out a doubt. My mpg's(not that they were bad in the first place) started going up and I noticed I can coast much further in gear. It also turns out that my pads were not worn all the way down to the metal but it seems like you said that there is a much harder material in the pad and looked like rocks were being scraped across it. I will try and take a pic tomorrow to show you guys. The driver side pads had more material than the passenger side but the inboard pad has less meat. The outboard pad on the passenger side was similar to the driver side but the inboard pad was getting pretty close to the metal on one side of the pad. It seems that both inboard pads was dragging on both sides. I ended up being able to turn the rotors but barely. I hope all this fixes the problems I/we have had.

 

About 15,000 miles. Sounds like this is what most peoples rotors/pads look like.

 

Yep that looks about right. Was one side worse than the other?

 

The rotors look similar but the pads on the passenger side are wearing evenly, both at about 50%. (pics are from drivers side)