uneven Brake pad wear

[ormesbyannie]

HI all, I have a Citroen C5 2.2 HDi 2003. Recently my brakes started squealing. Having changed the rear pads not so long ago I jacked up and removed off side rear wheel to inspect the pads. The inner pad was worn to almost the metal whilst the outer still had quite a bit of pad left, I decided to replace them. After replacing the offside I moved to the nearside but when checked both pads showed very little wear and not as much as the 'good' one on the offside. Because of the very little wear on these pads I opted not to change them. So, one pad out of four was worn to almost metal and the other three still had a lot of pad left. The piston on the badly worn pad moved freely. Any thoughts on why one pad out of four should be badly worn??
Thanks for your time.

[cazzz1975]

the side with less wear may be stiff or have a sticking cylinder, or at least not balanced, you should sort this before the bad weather

of course the over worn side may not be releasing the disc, or it could be the handbrake cable not releasing.

ideally you need to get it up on axle stands or bricks and spin the wheel whilst someone operates the brake so you can see which one of the causes it is.

[twazerk]

I.m almost certain the handbrake on the C5 operates on the front wheels, at work we have changed quite a few calipers on these due to sticking.
Hope this helps

[ormesbyannie]

Thanks for these, yes the handbrake on a C5 operates on the front wheels and as I say the piston on the cylinder of the worn pad was easily pushed in to allow the new pad to be fitted. There is still a lot of wear left on the front pads.

[twazerk]

As there is just a single 'piston' in the rear caliper it could be sticking on the bolts that the whole caliper slides on, as a rule if the worn pad is not next to the 'piston' then the caliper is sticking on it's slider bolts