Brake Shims

[Cotswold Pete]

I have the dreaded brake shudder, and have been reading posts on here and scouring the web to get my head around the debates on why some on this forum swear by some pads/disks, and others say the same pads/disk are rubbish.

So I started to wonder if the shims are the problem, because surely as they get older they loose their effectiveness.

A month ago I found shudder at 30mph and had ATS clean up and re-grease the fronts (as they were fitting new rear pads).

So after they did that I had about a week of no-shudder, but it has come back (but now at about 40mph).

So if the shims are worn and not a perfect fit due to wear, my reasoning is after 150,000 miles would it not be time to replace the shims as well as the pads.

Any thoughts on this, and if I get garage to order Lexus pads, will it come with new shims or do I need to get them separately.

Also any thoughts on what life of front pads should be. Fronts are Blueprints and have done around 30,000, yet ATS said they were fine, and the disks looked good (though I do not know what make disks are).

One other thing - the clunk comes and goes, which makes me wonder if the shim is moving about - which might indicate it needs to be replaced.

[plastic orange]

Only cure I've found is to replace discs. I didn't like blueprint pads as they squealed rather a lot, so I replaced them with Ferodo Premium. When replacing discs, ensure that the mounting surface is totally clean and don't use copaslip or similar on the mating surface.

My latest discs are Pagid and they seem to be of good quality.

Pete

[cruisermark]

when i bought my Mark 4 pads from the dealer the shims did not come with them which means they are a seperate part

[steve2006]

OEM shims are stainless steel so should last the lifetime of the car.

Brake judder can be due to brakes but also worn suspension joints can cause the same effect.

[plastic orange]

I went down the route of replacing suspension parts as my discs looked fine. This was a waste of effort as it was the discs that were the problem. A large number of large heavy automatic cars have the same problem and new discs, (or perhaps skimming) solves the problem.

I had a brief respite from shimmy by aggressively buffing discs, but it returned quickly, so just bite the bullet and fit new.

Pete