Can anybody shed any light on a weird problem I'm having? My brakes are performing fine. No noises or anything during normal driving, however, there's a huge hill near where I live, and when I drive down that, when I brake to stop at the junction at the bottom, the brakes make a really loud grinding noise, kind of like when there's no pads left and you're metal to metal. The pads were the first things I checked, and they are fine. Loads left on them.

 

Noise seems to be coming from back. 

You'll need to take the back wheels off to see because it's always the inner pad next to the piston that wears the most unless you have drums on the back, you don't actually say which you have.

It's a 2003 1.9tdi, sorry, forgot to mention that. 

If it was pad wear though, would I not be suffering a reduction in braking performance/hearing that noise all the time? It is literally only when I've gone down this particular hill, and I'm assuming the brakes have built up a lot of heat in a short space of time. It doesn't happen if I've been driving for a long time in traffic, stop start, heavy braking etc. 

The amount of braking effort from the back brakes varies according to how hard you're braking and axle load, during general driving the back brakes do very little work.

 

Let's not argue, just take a look at the inner rear pads please.

Apologies if I came across argumentative. I was merely trying to understand the problem. I'm not what you could call mechanically minded! Thanks for the advice. Will get wheels off tomorrow. Thanks for the advice. 

Edited 9 November, 201411 yr by drpellypo