Cars are important to us and the ability to even partly maintain them ourselves is a useful thing. Many of us really rely on our cars to get us places and I know that I for one would be lost without mine, but you don’t always realise how much maintainence they can require. No one should have to tell you just how dangerous it can be to run a car that is not properly maintained, its common knowledge.

Safety comes from a fully functioning vehicle and a sensible driver, but it can be costly just to keep your car in that fully functioning condition. You can cut down on a few of these costs by performing some basic and essential maintainence tasks yourself, one of which is to change your own brake pads. To change your brake pads you will need a selection of useful hand tools that can be purchased fairly cheaply and will help you to save money in the long run.

Brake pads suffer a lot of general wear and tear and it can be difficult to keep them in the fully functioning condition you might otherwise be accustomed to, but they do need to be replaced every so often to ensure that your braking systems continue to be as effective as possible. Try to replace your pads every 30,000 – 35,000 miles, this is the suggested distance but of course sometimes they can wear down faster or slower depending on certain variables in the conditions and the vehicles. You just need to look out for any obvious signs that your brakes need attention.

There are both auditory and visual ways of telling that your brake pads need replacing or will need to be replaced soon. First of all you can see it, when the brake pads become worn down you can tell by how thick they are, when they are only about 1/4 of an inch thick you will need to think about replacing them fairly soon. But you don’t need to check them all of the time to tell, if your car makes a screeching sound when you hit the brakes then that is also a sign that the pads will need to be replaced soon.

Those of you who are unsure of where to locate the brake pads can probably track down countless resources online that will show you where they are, but quite simply they are on the wheels of the car (sometimes only the rear wheels). If you look from above you should be able to see the brake pad pressed against the metal rotor.

Brake pads work by pressing against the metal rotor when you apply them, which causes the vehicle to slow and eventually stop. They are most effective in causing the vehicle to come to a hault when they are not as worn, the more worn they become the less effective they become and the longer it takes for the vehicle to stop. If your brake pads reach 1/8 of an inch in thickness then you will have to replace them urgently, because that’s the level where the brake pads start to cause damage to the metal rotor, and once there is damage you’ll be looking at a heavy sum to get your car back in working order. Should you start to hear a sound from your brakes that’s like scraping metal then it’s too late, the car is damaged and you will most likely have to pay a qualified expert to sort it.

If you pay attention to your brakes when driving you can usually tell whether or not they are okay, but it is always important to remember that changing them a little too early is always better than changing them too late.