'07 Yukon XL Denali - Rear Brakes

[BSarteSr]

I do my own brakes, not hard, but found some issues with my '07 Yukon XL Denali.

Truck has 105k miles on it and just recently did the rotors and brakes for the second time since I have had it. First time I found that the passenger side rear brake seemed to wear faster than the driver side or the front. Replaced the rotors and pads all around with good premium rotors and ceramic pads, seemed to work fine.

When the brakes needed to be done again, did the same thing, only I found that the front brakes did not need to be done as soon as the back brakes, so I did the back ones, drove another 10k-12k miles, then did the front. Also found that the passenger side rear wore faster than the others.

Now I have 15k miles on the rear and starting to sound like the passenger rear is needing to be done again (typical grinding sound like the pad wore out), starting to think I have an issue with the rear proportioning valve or maybe the caliper?

My question here is this any kind of a "known" issue or am I just having a typical brake issue and need to troubleshoot a possible problem with the proportioning valve or maybe a caliper?

 

[Wake]

I'd take a look at the brake hardware.

I just tackled this on my new to me 07. Had brake squeal develop after about a week of buying it. The brake pads were pretty new so I checked out a few other things and here's what I found.


Brake caliper pins were binding. Removed caliper from caliper bracket and replaced one pin on each side (bottoms) that had corroded. Added high temp grease and now the caliper slides easily. If it binds you may have one or both brake pads wear unevenly.

Brake pad clips had rust build up on them as well as the cast iron caliper bracket. I used a file to clean the pocket of the bracket where the pad clips sit. The rust had built up underneath and was putting pressure against the clips and was causing the pad to bind instead of being able to slide freely in the caliper bracket. The clips I cleaned with a wire brush.

No more squeaks.

If your pads are wearing unevenly most likely you have something binding, keeping the pads from disengaging the rotors all the way. It's likely one of the two things I mentioned above. The only thing left is the caliper itself that might be grooved in the piston bore. I used to rebuild these in the past with a hone and new seal kit but nowadays I only find rebuilt calipers on an exchange basis being available. I've used the Advance Auto stock with the 20% off + coupon for future purchase route and gotten rebuilt rear calipers for less than $100 for the pair. I've had pretty good luck with those. Fronts would probably run you around $150 a pair with coupon if you replaced those as well.