Rear Pad falling out!
 

Driving car home from work the other day, got within a mile of home and rear brakes started to screetch when applied as if they were a bit rusty from not being used for a while. Pumped the brakes a few times and all seemed fine. Then a few seconds later they started to sound like they were sticking on.
Coming up to a left turn slowed down and just before i turned there was a loud clunk from the rear and the outer pad on the far side dropped out!

Retreived the pad and there is plenty of wear left on it.
I put it back and took the car down the road to test it and within about 400yds i put the brakes on and it spat it straight back out.

Pads and disks were replaced about 10'000 miles ago at dealers, but ever since when braking there has been a clunk from the rear. Got the dealer to check this out, they stripped them down, checked and replaced them saying nothing wrong. still has the clunk though.

Any ideas what is causing the pad to drop out when braking. The disc seems to sit nearer to the inside of the calliper, and now the pads have worn enough this one gets pushed out of its mount by the calliper when braking.

I suspect the discs may have the wrong offset??

Any ideas?

Have they fitted the right pads as I know there are 2 different sorts some that have a metal lug type clip and the others don't I only know this as I changed my rear pads recently and found this out

as above pre 98'ish cars use a different 'sliding' caliper to the 98> cars...........although pads can "fit" either caliper they will not locate and this is possibly your issue??
fairly suprised that the pad can move enough to fall out though??
what year/model of car ?? and do you have any pics of the pads/calipers,. might have a better understanding of what's happening.............

alyn -- asperformance.com

Assuming your username is still valid, your RB5 has the 99 single-pot sliding caliper - same as mine.

The correct pad should look like this:-

http://www.stefanostadal.homedns.org...s/DP31293C.jpg

I'm not sure if the disc would actually cause a problem since the caliper itself is bolted to the wheel hub assembly. If the disc offset was incorrect then it wouldn't sit true in the centre of the caliper and should be very obviously wrong. If it were only slightly out then you should notice uneven wear between the inner and outer pads, but it shouldn't cause it to just fall out.

The pad design has lugs that slide into the caliper and when pressed to the disc should make it impossible just to fallout. I assume the backing on the pad hasn't actually failed.

Stefan

Car is a 99 RB5. The inside pad has a metal clip on it, but this one is fine.
When the calliper pushes the pad toward the disc it is pushed out of its two metal holding clips before it reaches the disc.
Will try and get some pics later.

Maybe it's binding on the clip on the other side or the caliper is twisting under load ??

Stefan

Isn't that 'metal clip' the squel thingy that touches the discs when the pads are worn out to let you know!!

AFAIK, yes it is.