Rear brakes

[hatters]

I went out in the Elan on Saturday to Whitchurch and back ,when I returned home I washed the car of and put it in the garage,On Monday I wanted to move it to get something of one of the shelves behind it .It wasn't in gear and I never leave it parked in the garage with the hand break on I tried to push it but it was solid and wouldn't move so I had a go at rocking it backwards and forwards and it eventually became free .Its done this several times in the past especially after washing so I didnt think anymore about it until this morning when I went out in it ,I started to drive it and the Brake pedal didn't feel as good it usually is and the hand brake lever came right up almost disturbing the console and there was no handbrake at all .Also when the footbrake was applied I could here a high pitched scrapping noise.
When I went to close the garage door I found the answer, there it was lying on the floor ,the friction part of the brake pad it had come adrift from the metal there was still lots of wear left in it ,but surely this should never happen .Its the first time I have come across it and the consequences of it happening whilst you are driving at speed are unthinkable .To sum up I am not very impressed at all, something thats heat bonded like that should never seperate from the metal .

[theelanman]

we used to tend to find that the cheaper (sorry to say asian) materials didnt fair well in many test we used to do....
brake manufacture is very much a dark art....its very hard to get right and very ard to keep it consistant.....
if the tooling on that day had a temperature incrment of just 5deg and it was a new batch of underlay then the resulting adhesion and micro cracking can be seriously affected......the checking proceure is very key and every batch we did was testedfor everything all he way through the manufacture.....
it will only take a slight deviation in back plate too.....
all these add up to possible lifting and distortion of the pad which whilst not visible to the naked eye will deform to a lesser or greater extent during the heat cycle...
generally the resins used will not deform unless there is a fault in the material.....

as a vey simple guide.....when fitting new pads.....
bounce the butt end of a pencil off the wearing surface of a pad.....it should 'ping'
if it sounds more like a dull thud then take em back.......

[hatters]

Thanks for that good piece of information ,its the same as ringing a piece of china or porcelain to see if it has a crack in it
Thanks again

[Rusty Wishbone]

there it was lying on the floor ,the friction part of the brake pad it had come adrift from the metal

As you say, this is completely unacceptable. It sounds to me like someone has fitted counterfeit brake pads. Surely no one would produce low quality brake pads of this kind under their own name.

For this reason, I never buy safety-critical items from Ebay, only from highly reputable retailers. I might pay more, but counterfeits are much less likely.