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LOUD brake squeal in the morning

3K views 9 replies 7 participants last post by  redheadedrod 
#1 ·
We have a 2013 CTS with new brakes all the way around. It squeaks like crazy when my wife backs out of the driveway first thing in the morning, then goes away once she drives off. It happens every morning, and it's loud enough for neighbors 3 houses down to hear every time she pulls out of the garage.

I pulled the calipers and pads off, greased all the pads and hosed everything down with brake cleaner. Didn't help at all. I've never heard anything like this. I took it to the dealership and they chalked it up to "the Cadillac brake squeal."

I tried to attach a video, but it won't let me.
 
#2 ·
If it wasn't audible before the brake job, it shouldn't be heard now.
Can you isolate it to front/rear or better yet, a specific corner?
Perhaps stand by the car the next time the Mrs. leaves.
 
#3 ·
New brakes - and no such thing as "the Cadillac brake squeal". The installing shop or dealership owes you a correct install job.

I wonder if the pads they used should have had a rubberized sticky backing applied ? Some pads come with a form of rubbery backing to prevent squeaks due to high frequency vibration at slow braking speeds. The reverse only is weird ............

I've done the brakes on 10 or 11 fairly local Cadillacs, using "AC Delco", EBC, Centric, other components and no squeals to date ............


 
#4 · (Edited)
Noise of that intensity only when backing up makes me suspect something is not right with the emergency brake shoe system. I never looked closely partly because I have not had to replace brakes on the car yet, but I suspect it is setup similar to the standard rear drum system with a primary and secondary shoe. When rolling in reverse, the expansion point normally being at the top of the shoes, results in one of the shoes sort of being hooked and dragged outward a bit against the drum. A shoe that is worn out and close to the rivets, or is just noisy by nature usually makes a lot of fuss under that circumstance. This may be the reason nothing you've done so far has improved the situation, especially if semi metallic lining was used for that application, or any of the locations on the car.

One way to test for this would be to apply the emergency brake gradually to see if it makes a difference when the car is rolling back under the ideal conditions to duplicate the noise.

Also, if they resurfaced the rotors on the car, they may not have checked the shoes.
 
#6 ·
You might be on to something with the parking brake idea. Yesterday I backed out of the driveway using only the parking brake to slow, and it didn't squeal. First time ever.

I already had an appointment with the dealership for some warranty work, so I'm having them check. Of course the middle aged gal working the service department couldn't have been less interested in me describing the brake squeal. So I'm sure I'll have to specify they check the parking brake shoes.
 
#9 ·
After I checked everything myself, greased the pads but didn't see anything obvious, I took it back to the dealership. They couldn't see anything obvious either, but they resurfaced the rotors and replaced the pads (all under warranty), and now it doesn't make a peep. It was the weirdest squeal. Sounded like a cat getting tortured every time my wife backed out of the garage. Thankfully it's fixed now!
 
#10 ·
The squeal tab on one of the brake pads was probably slightly bent. I had this happen on a set of brand new brake pads once and when you looked at it closely you could see the tab was slightly bent. Bend it back, no more squeal.
 
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