brakes+problem=bad!

[esskater892]

ok, so after taking my car to the wash i notice a weird metal scrapping sound. ide say it was 4/4 time. lol. i had some finishing rinsing to do cause i ran out of quarters at the wash and when i sprayed my tires a whole bunch of steam rose in to the air. so ive now taken my wheel off and to me from what i can tell there doesnt look like anything wrong with the rotors, but when i popped the hood and checked the fluid it looked like this.

any ideas? i dont want my brakes to fail while im driving and i dont wanna damage anything.

[91H22ACB7]

Did steam pour off of all 4? If it was only one, id suggest that a caliper may be dragging.

[accordztech]

Caliper dragging? Its a highly inaccurate test to confirm that.

So you drive your car then wahsed around the tires and saw steam...so basically cool water is hitting a hot rotor and evaporating. Normal

As for the fluid color, it gets like that after tme due to moisture in the system and other stuff. Its recommended you flush your brake lines at least once in a while maybe every year in my book.

Your brakes wont fall off. As for the noise you here listen for it and if it sounds repetitive perhaps one of yourpads is wearing thin.

[batever]

Caliper dragging? Its a highly inaccurate test to confirm that.

So you drive your car then wahsed around the tires and saw steam...so basically cool water is hitting a hot rotor and evaporating. Normal

As for the fluid color, it gets like that after tme due to moisture in the system and other stuff. Its recommended you flush your brake lines at least once in a while maybe every year in my book.

Your brakes wont fall off. As for the noise you here listen for it and if it sounds repetitive perhaps one of yourpads is wearing thin.

Everything he said, plus: your dust shield on your brake assembly might have gotten bent in the carwash, causing the scraping sound as a slightly warper rotor rotates past it.

OR one of your brake pads is worn really thin, so thin that the pad is leaning over onto the rotor when the brake is off and lightly scraping the rotor as it rotates.

None of this is urgent but you should probably have the brakes looked at. Or do it yourself, it's DEAD SIMPLE and you dont even really need to get under the car much to deal with if you are mindful. I've seen guys change their brake padsusing only a scissors jack and no jackstand in front of Autozone LOL. Not that you'd want to try that your first time.

For the future, don't spray water, especially cold water, on your rotors when they are hot as you could cause them to warp due to thermal effects. Not a big worry, but it's technically a possibility. If my own rotors warped from this I probably wouldn't even notice because they are already so bad!

[esskater892]

Ya I know about cold water on a hot serface. But this seemed excessive. And it only did this to the front two wheels but after driving to the car wash and spraying em there it didn't steam. That's why I think somethings up. And as far as I can tell nothing seems out of place. But ya right now I've got the car up on two scissor jacks. Lol. And I'll just kinda take the pads off. Does anyone know a way to bleed the breaks faster than having to pump the breaks. I don't wanna spend a whole day doing this.