V50 Brakes : Rear brake pad change MY10 Drive

[7050man]

Hi all, at the weekend I replaced the rear brake pads on my MY10 Drive 1.6D

All went well, but I thought I'd give a little feedback in response to the helpful info given by others on the forum recently.

Mileage is 70k and at the last service my dealer had said that the inner pads were worn more than the outer pair.

When I removed them, this was indeed the case, but what I also noticed was that the inner pads had also not worn evenly. The outer pads had much more life on them.

The first side I did was off side. When I removed the pads a small peice of dowl about 4mm diameter and approx 5mm long with a magnetic tip fell out from the pad area. I didn't see where it had come from and more importantly I couldn't see what it would do. The conclusion I reached was that it had perhaps been in there from when the car was being assembled in the factory. I thought that perhaps this may have contributed to uneven wear, but I suspect that a small amount of corrosion on main carrier where pads contact in conjunction with a small degree of muck on slide pins were the real reasons for this.

The other side had no sign of this dowl.

Incidently, I did not touch the handbrake adjustment or loosen off nipple and clmp the hose on the caliper. I did use a windback tool, which incidently I had to modify because the pin diameter did not fit the pistons. I just pumped the brakes several times to get the pistions back in position and the brakes were fine. The handbrake also worked fine with no difference in operation than before.

One last thing, my car is always cleaned, including calipers and wheel area. I did however find that where the pads contact the holder there was a bit of scale and corrosion. This was scraped out woth a brush and a screwdriver.

The brakes feel like new now and I suspect that they have been sticking due to this corrosion. I've always felt the brakes on this car are weaker compared to my older 2.0ltr, but just thought that this was due to a lower spec system on the smaller engine model. They certainly have much more feel and better stopping power now.

One other observation, is that after a few hundred miles I am getting less brake dust on the rear wheels. This reinforces my thought that they were sticking on the inner pads. I have of course used Volvo parts.

Anyway, thanks to everyone that answered my questions in other posts.