This morning I put a new set of front disk brake pads on my girlfriends 2004 Nissan Sentra. The pads she bought were “Brake Best Select” brand “Premium” grade. The new pads stop the car well and are quiet when stopping but she says she can here a grinding noise when driving, like the pads are not completely disengaging from the rotors. Is it possible that I did to good of a job bleeding them after I put the new pads in? Or, is this just the new pads getting seated and will go away with a little driving. My only other guess is that the value brand pads are not good enough and I need to put on a set of original equipment Nissan pads from the dealer.
Some makes grinding noises while braking, especially the pads that’s been designed for durability in the endurance races tends to do that. But something would have to be wrong if you hear a griding noise while driving without applying the brake. It might either be driving with hanging the seatbelt outside the car or dragging the rear bumper.
If I were you, I’d check out the surface of the rotors/pads first whether they’re correctly mating or not. Good luck.
Put the front end up on stands and spin up the front wheels. Do you hear any strange noise? Do the wheels rotate freely? Are the pads held in place by little spring steel clips? Did you replace those too, or perhaps not install one correctly?
I’ll go along with Caddyman on this. Recheck your work and see if an anti-rattle clip is in there wrong, bent, or whatever.
I put the car up on stands as suggested and the noise was definatly coming from the drivers side. I took that wheel and caliper off again and triple checked to make sure that the pads were in correctly as well as all of the clips and wires, then put it all back together. After test braking several times 90% of the noise was gone. I told her to drive it for a week and see if the noise goes away completely. If not I will take it apart again.
Thanks for all the help.