Thread: Delamination of trailer's brake pads

So, new trailer and after about (maybe going from rough guess) 1000kms, and (more accurately from sounder logs) 34 trips, would you expect the brake pads on both sides to delaminate from the steel backing?

Now 28 of those outings, the boat moves 200m to the ramp - high heat no issue. The others are a 200km one way trip but no issue as a stopped over night before lunching. A couple of 20km trips where they could have got warm/hot before dunking.

Is it just shit pads, or something else to look at?

Oh and it's a 2.1 T boat and trailer, towed by a Toyota highlander. And it still stopped all ok - just a bit of noise..

I’m no mechanic but I’d be looking at the brake hubs/rotors to see what was happening there......

A conversation with a technician from BNT (who rebuild units I think) might be informative

There are a few things to check first, are the brakes not fully releasing or coming on to soon? It wouldn’t take long for them to get hot but I would have thought you would have noticed something odd. They may just be crap pads but I haven’t seen them delaminate before usually they will wear out prematurely or not work to well when hot if they are crap. You should take it back to where you bought it?
Photos of discs and pads would be interesting.

I didn't take a pic of the discs, they looked OK.
But here is one of the pads. Heaps of meat, but let go.


I should have mentioned, its just a standard hydraulic Trojan system.

@Beaker, Trojan supply both stainless backed pads and steel backed pads. If your calipers are stainless then they should be stainless backed as well. Doesn't look like corrosion going by the pix but straight out delamination. Stainless is a prick of a substrate to bond anything too, so could be just a failure. I would expect more life, but these thing happen.

Originally Posted by Mathias

@Beaker, Trojan supply both stainless backed pads and steel backed pads. If your calipers are stainless then they should be stainless backed as well. Doesn't look like corrosion going by the pix but straight out delamination. Stainless is a prick of a substrate to bond anything too, so could be just a failure. I would expect more life, but these thing happen.

That's where I'm at - Shit happens.
Hopefully a one time event

Maybe they not getting a heat up to evaporate the water after a dunking most common thing i see is corosion undet the lining on boat trailers

Did it happen to all four pads, I was thinking the pads may have not been fitted properly and they jammed in the slides/mounts then the piston may have bent the pad slightly breaking the pad off the backing steel. I sure hope it’s a one off.

All four were like that. New set of pads was only thirty something bucks, the none stainless version. I reckon it was the cook/dunk myself, or possibly a good over heat - have seen track day car pads do this a bit