Useless break wear indicators?

Can those wear indicators on disk brake pads be heard by people who are
driving around with their windows rolled up? I've noticed lots of cars
squealing constantly because of them, and a friend of mine who's fussy
about car care (but doesn't know about cars) said that he never knew
tha this brakes were squealing until somebody told him. He had his
brakes fixed the next day.

Why don't they make wear indicators by notching out the rotor near the
hub so when a metal area of the pad scrapes it, it won't only make a
pulsating squeal but will also cause the brake pedal to pulsate? I
can't imagine this costing more than the metal fingernails they put on
pads now because the notches can be molded into the rotors and no extra
machining would be required.

larry moe 'n curly wrote:
> Can those wear indicators on disk brake pads be heard by people who are
> driving around with their windows rolled up? I've noticed lots of cars
> squealing constantly because of them, and a friend of mine who's fussy
> about car care (but doesn't know about cars) said that he never knew
> tha this brakes were squealing until somebody told him. He had his
> brakes fixed the next day.

Your friend is clueless. How can one drive around all week and not
notice the squealing?

> wrote in message
oups.com...
>
>
> larry moe 'n curly wrote:
>> Can those wear indicators on disk brake pads be heard by people who are
>> driving around with their windows rolled up? I've noticed lots of cars
>> squealing constantly because of them, and a friend of mine who's fussy
>> about car care (but doesn't know about cars) said that he never knew
>> tha this brakes were squealing until somebody told him. He had his
>> brakes fixed the next day.
>
> Your friend is clueless. How can one drive around all week and not
> notice the squealing?

Hearing loss, can not hear hi frequencys W W

wrote:
> larry moe 'n curly wrote:
> > Can those wear indicators on disk brake pads be heard by people who are
> > driving around with their windows rolled up? I've noticed lots of cars
> > squealing constantly because of them, and a friend of mine who's fussy
> > about car care (but doesn't know about cars) said that he never knew
> > tha this brakes were squealing until somebody told him. He had his
> > brakes fixed the next day.
>
> Your friend is clueless. How can one drive around all week and not
> notice the squealing?

What we did before pad wear indicators:
1. Those that took care of their cars would either inspect the pads or
use a mechanic to do so.
2. Those that didn't take care of their cars used the earlier built-in
pad wear indicator. The metal-on-metal scraping was audible to all but
the deaf and could be felt in the pedal.

Not a whole lot has changed since those days except that the people in
(2.) drive around wondering what that squealing noise is until it
converts to metal-on-metal scraping.

John S. wrote:

> 2. Those that didn't take care of their cars used the earlier built-in
> pad wear indicator. The metal-on-metal scraping was audible to all but
> the deaf and could be felt in the pedal.
>
> Not a whole lot has changed since those days except that the people in
> (2.) drive around wondering what that squealing noise is until it
> converts to metal-on-metal scraping.

Even better is when the scraping noise changes ever-so-subtly to a
different, worse, more alarming scraping and loss of braking ability --
when the pads become so thin they fall out of their holders and the
piston becomes the new friction material. Give these guys credit,
though. They usually come right in when that happens.

Toyota MDT in MO

wrote:
> larry moe 'n curly wrote:

> > I've noticed lots of cars squealing constantly because
> > of them, and a friend of mine who's fussy about car
> > care (but doesn't know about cars) said that he never
> > knew that his brakes were squealing until somebody
> told him. He had his brakes fixed the next day.
>
> Your friend is clueless. How can one drive around all
> week and not notice the squealing?

I've noticed many cars running around with squealing brakes, and I know
that it's hard to hear outside noises with the windows rolled up,
especially if the car is naturally noisy like my Escort. I sometimes
cruise around with all the windows down to check for funny noises, and
I once found a bad tire that way.