Does anyone else find that Hawk or other aftermarket pads are too wide and the backing plate needs to be filed down?

This happened with my Brembos, and now my new Stoptech kit. The Hawk pads are very tight against the slide.. and without filing down have to be forced into place. The Stoptech pads barely touch the slide, but do fall into place easily. Not so with the Hawks..








I generally put the pads into a vise and file with a pretty aggressive grit and maybe take the dremel to them for good measure.. Is this common?

 

dammn that sucks.....

i would do the same thing......

-J

 

Weird, I've been using hawks for a few years now with Brembo and never had this issue. They dont even come with backing plates...

 

yes, this is common...take a file to the edges of the pad, make sure it is smooth after you trim them...sometimes you just have to remove the paint, no metal...

 

When I say 'backing plate' I mean the hunk of metal that the pad is attached to. The backing plate has two holes in it for the two Brembo sliding pins to go through. This is not the shim between the backing plate and the caliper/pistons.

A few minutes of filing on the Hawk pad and it slid in nicely .. This is more a curiosity question. I've heard of it (and experienced) before and wondered if I was the only one thoroughly annoyed that I need to tailor my brand new pads prior to install. Maybe I just need to go with a different brand.

 

OHHH gotcha. Yeah I never had to shave them either lol. Dunno.

 

I've found it very common for the steel backing plate to be too tight. Typically, it looks like they stamp the steel back out and when that happens you can see that the part wasn't trimmed very well and there is flashing on the edges. I've got a belt sander and just sand off any metal that makes the pad fit too tight in the caliper. I've changed pads on all of our cars and the pads from the auto stores can be the worst. I always sand off enough to insure a snug fit but no binding. It's always made me wonder if these brake shops or dealers ever check this and make sure the pads aren't too snug for the caliper.