hey everyone. i was just wondering what brakes sound like when theyre due for a change? is there a scraping or groaning sound along the lines of metal on metal? i can somewhat avoid the noise if i only feather the break as light as possible, just start breaking a lot earlier than i normally would and downshifting.

 

take off your wheels and look down the top of your breaks...check n see how much of the break pad is left. sounds to me like you might need new pads

 

Taking them OFF, hm i think Mazda3 has pretty easy wheels 5 spoke, which is really easy without even removing the wheels at all.
Just like Mike said, check your brake pads, usually before they wear out completely, there is a slight noise, if brake pads are not reaplced on time, it will be gone and your will be using bare metal on metal to stop, meaning sraching your rotors pretty bad. I did it once on my old car, but didn't care because i was waiting to buy new pads and rotos anyway.

 

maybe you can see the outside pad easily, but for checking the inside pad on the other side of the rotor, i think u need to take ur wheel off.

 

Pad with a warning indicator would make a high pitched squeal noise when not braking that would go away when brakes are applied. Your pads unfortunately do not have them in front or rear I believe. Definitely check the brakes in front and rear to see if they are metal to metal. If they look ok, check link to the bulletin below. It only applies to 3's with under 12k miles and 12 months since purchased however.


http://www.finishlineperformance.com.../docs/0028.pdf

 

i tried to look at my brakes to check the wearing, but i had no idea for what i was looking. i guess ill just make an appointment with mazda to give them a look, and also try and figure out what the deal with my startup is. thanks for that link babyhuey.

 

Not at all times, brake pad life can be checked by looking between the wheel spokes, looking straight down at your caliper, than look exactly at the part which touches the rotors of the caliper (those are brake pads), and believe it or not if you had wheels like Buicks do or Stock Corolla wheels, than the only way to check is to remove the wheels, on Mazda3s is easy to check, i do it every other weekend, no need to remove the wheel, BUT if you have no experience with Brake pads, best way to remove your wheels, make sure what is what, than you will understand it is pointless to remove a wheel to check your brake pad life.

 

its not that hard to take off a wheel if you think you have a serious problem with your breaks....5 lug nuts and a few counter clockwise turns later - its off...im just talking about being thorough.

 

I just changed the pads and rotors on my girl friends honda civic ex. Extremely easy to do...take the tire off and if you even want to be even more thorough if you know anything about brakes just take the bottom caliper bolt off and the caliper will fold up and you can take the pad right off and look at it...

 

Sounds easy, but do not think it is worth removing all of those parts just to ckeck brake pads, as for changing than as u experienced it is the only way.
Does anyone here knows how long does it take for a rear and front brake pads to wear out? I will post pics HOW the brake pads can be checked on MAzda 3.