My brakes are squeaking or grinding

Squeaking or grinding brakes

If you are hearing a high-pitched squeal, that is usually fine to drive on for a short while, but get it looked at soon. If you are hearing grinding, a low metallic scraping that gets worse when you brake, stop driving the car. Not next week, not tomorrow. Grinding means the pad material is gone and metal is now rubbing on metal. Every mile you drive on it costs you money in rotor damage and, more importantly, it means your brakes are not stopping the car the way they should.

The squeal is not a defect. Brake pads have a small metal tab built into them on purpose, a wear indicator, and it is designed to touch the rotor and make noise once the pad gets thin. It is the brake system telling you it is time. Most people hear it for a week or two before doing anything about it, and that is usually okay. Grinding is a different situation. It means the pad is worn past the metal tab entirely, and now it is the metal backing plate touching the rotor directly.

What causes it, most common first

Worn-out pads are by far the most common cause of both sounds. Less often, squealing can come from cheap or glazed pads, dust or debris on the rotor, or a caliper that is not releasing fully. Grinding can also mean a caliper piston is seized and holding the pad against the rotor all the time, or in rare cases a wheel bearing going bad, which sounds similar but changes with speed rather than with braking.

How to tell which one you have

Squeal that happens mainly on light braking, and goes away or lessens when you brake harder, is almost always the wear indicator doing its job. Grinding that happens every time you brake, especially if you can feel it through the pedal, is worn-out pads on bare metal. If the noise is constant, even when you are not touching the brakes at all, and changes with your speed rather than with braking, that points more toward a wheel bearing, which is a different repair. A burning smell along with grinding on one wheel can mean a stuck caliper cooking the pad and rotor.

What the repair involves

Squealing usually means a straightforward pad replacement, sometimes with the rotors resurfaced or replaced if they are worn or grooved. Grinding almost always means the rotors are damaged too, since metal has been running against metal, so the job is pads and rotors both, and sometimes a caliper if one has seized. Cost depends on the vehicle, whether one axle or both need work, and how far the rotors have worn, so it is not something we can quote without seeing it. As a rough shape of things: pad-only jobs are the cheapest, pads with rotors cost more, and a seized caliper adds to that. If you are hearing grinding, do not put it off. Bring it in and we will pull a wheel and take a look before anything else gets decided.