Check your drum brakes!!

Yep, this is just the way it is. It's a simple fact-- The front pads wear out faster than the rear shoes because a lot of the vehicle's weight is shifted forward while braking. This takes more energy (& pressure) from the front brakes to stop. If someone's rear brakes are wearing out sooner than the fronts, there's a problem.

 

I just got brand new brakes in the front but tyhe braking still is horrible ... i am sure rear brakes have something major to do with this ... why? Why ? why couldnt toyota charge me an extra couple of hundred bucks but give me rear disk brakes on the Taco

 

"As they do wear more quickly than the front." Something is whack here. I been driving and working on veehickels since B 4 your daddy was a glint in your grand daddy's and always went thru 2 to 4 sets of front pads to back shoes. Yeh definitely whack.

 

Roughly 80% of your braking comes from the front wheels.

 

Yes, that is the general rule but Toyota drum brakes are different as they put the adjusters on top with a solid pivot on the bottom. For this reason the way to self adjust is by using the parking brake. You can do each brake by crawling under the back and pulling on each parking brake cable. Does not help if the adjusters get sticky.

 

So some of you are saying having the ABS kick in can effect the way the rear drums wear? Its been snow and ice most of Dec. in NV and the ABS kicks in daily. When will Toyota switch to rear discs - that was the one negative when comparing to the Nssan Frontier!

 

No.... the amount of time the ABS kicks in should not have any affect on how the drums wear.

 

strange, my truck has less than 20k miles and my front brake pads have 20-30% left

 

Well for me. After reading this, Its sounds like everyone has different situations occuring. I was basing this off of my truck and a few others that I've heard about

I went in for a synthetic oil change. They had a coupon and I took advantage of it. I told them to check my drum brakes as they had alot of play. They just readjusted everything and put new shoes on without charging me.
And my truck is WAYY over the warranty

I cleaned the drum as best as I could with the given pressure washer. It was one of those self serve car washes. I kept on spraying it until no grains or bit of mud was coming out of the mud.

Most of the mud I was in was very slimy, not like mud puddles.

And I use my ebrake all the time, even on level ground. Its just a habit. I dont like that extra lunge that the truck takes when you put it into P, turn truck off, and then take your foot off the brake.

 

That's why I usually ask people what specific deficiency/deficiencies switching to rear disc brakes will solve? They tend to be heavier and they tend to use less effective and reliable parking brake mechanisms (since drums are self-energizing). The one place that rear disc brakes really seem to help is in high heat-soak conditions, such as repeatedly braking from very high speeds (far more than you ever do on streets).

In most applications there is just no performance to be gained by just switching to rear discs.

 

Both times I had to replace pads and rotors on my G35, the rear ones were way worse than the front.......but I also think I may have cooked them at the track cause after every session the rear rotors were much hotter than the fronts cause the smaller rotors couldn't dissipate the heat as well.

 

I was not aware of this. I am a notoriously bad parking brake user, laziness I suppose. I will start using it more if for no other reason than to help keep the rear brakes adjusted. Thanks for the info.

 

X2... Proportioning valve is out of whack.

 

I'm not talking about power washing them from the outside...

When mud is involved - spraying them from the outside isn't gonna clean them. You have to take the wheel off and take the drum off. Spray the internals where the shoes are.... the mud cakes up inside.

 

Thats all I did. I didnt take off the wheels and drums. I wasn't doing a Jamie.

It was just very slimy Alabama clay. Like the top was soaked but not enough to get everywhere.

And I'm not trying to argue, Promise

 

on normaliish braking to firm the front does 60-75% of the braking or so... the rear would just lock up if it did 50%.... i wonder if yours is dragging on dirt or the pads.

 

For all of the people that use the two front change to one rear change just take into consideration with the new EBD and VSC systems the rear brakes are used alot more than they normally would be in a conventional system. When I had my '08 Accord many owners complained at how fast they were going through the rear pads. Just some food for thought.

 

Sure, that the distribution percentage is greater to the front but the EBD system helps eliminate the nosedive effect which would essentially shift more braking to the rear than in a normal system. I would assume during the braking procedure the system would sense traction loss and would either activate ABS and or distribute more braking force to the tires with traction .

Also, how are you to 42,000 posts? Is someone selling posts somewhere? Is there a post purchasing store on the internet I don't know about?