I seem to have an issue with my brake pads just slightly dragging on "possibly" all four corners. I have rebuilt the front calipers. Completely cleaned the heck out of the rears. But it still seems as though all four sets of pads are ever so slightly dragging on the rotors.

About 3-4 thousand miles ago, I did install new Hawk Performance pads and Powerslot rotors (slotted and dimpled, not drilled through). I noticed that the brake pads were dragging, since you can hear the pads "fluttering" over the slots at low speeds in the neighborhood along curbs or short walls. They "may" have been dragging since day one, but since it was during the winter when I installed the pads and rotors, the windows were up during driving, so I probably wouldn't have heard the noise.

I had been in contact with Powerslot, they said my calipers need to be replaced or rebuilt. (about 73K miles on the car) During this process, I noticed they (pads) were all slightly touching the rotors on all four corners. (from what I can see) The calipers move freely, even new guide pins were installed as part of the rebuild.

Is there anything else I can look for? Is there another component in the braking system that may not allow the brake calipers to release off the rotors completely (master cylinder)? Is there a pressure adjustment somewhere to allow the calipers to retract further??

Any help at this point would be appreciated! If I can't figure this out soon, I guess I will go and buy some stock rotors. At least I won't be driven nuts each day by the noise!!

 

Don't know to much about sloted rotors or the drilled ones. But I imagine either one of them your gonna get a draging noise from them cause the pads are always rubing on the rotors even on stock brakes. But on the sloted and drilled ones your gonna get a biger echo of the noise. Personaly I stick with the stock type of rotor unless you need the extra cooling and do alot of aggressive road braking or track braking. Only type of upgrade i'd do is a bigger pad and rotor.

 

I didn't realize brake pads actually touch the rotors during normal operation. (non-braking conditions) Guess I'll have to look at my other cars with disk brakes for comparison.

 

Yeah I posted a thread about this eariler. Basically when I checked my brakepads one day whilst my car is parked (I leave it in neutral and just pull up the handbrake) I noticed that the front brakes seem to be pushing against the rotors. I thought there was suppose to be a visible gap or something. I was assured that it was normal and that it's somewhat contacting the rotors but with no pressure and it is fine.

 

Disc brakes will always have the pads contacting the rotors simply because there isn't a spring to pull them away.

I had a motorcycle years ago with drilled rotors and it made the same "clattering" noise you are talking about.It sounded like the old "playing card in the spokes" engine noise makers we had in the olden days.