A few months ago I put on fresh rotors and hawk HPs up front on my 4 pot calipers. The calipers had been on the car a while with generic pads. once i changed the rotors and pads though, they have been VERY noisy. it started out that under moderate-heavy braking they'd squeal but if you pushed harder or let off, they'd stop. now however they scream at you all the way to a stop even with light braking. eyeballing the pads shows practically no wear.
I was going to go take a look this morning but a cold front came through and the though of cold hands smacking into a strut doesn't seem all that pleasing.

any ideas of what it could be? could the wear tabs be extending too far?

 

were the factory shims used, and did you use any of the brake quiet gunk on them???

 

i second the shim idea... and as far as brake quiet goop i've found the orange carquest stuff to be the best

 

CRC makes the best disc quiet stuff. It's orange and you can get it at Autozone. I'm almost sure that's your problem, your getting vibration and when you press harder it stops.

 

your exactly right jazz. yeah when you press the brakes your pads and everything are vibrating really slightly, not noticiable but they do. withought padding (shims, or quiet goop stuff) they will scream untill you press hard and the vibration goes away

 

i was missing two shims on the passenger side, found 1 of them and put the brake quiet stuff that looks like Pokey's blood all over them. there's still some squealing so i assume it's the last anti rattle plate.

i did notice something though. both front wheels wobble on the vertical axis only. is this normal? it seems like it'd be a loose axle nut, but then it should wobble at every angle, right?

 

Right, but the 3-9 o'clock wiggle test may be masked by the slop in the steering, or the ball joints are worn.

 

but is the vertical axis play normal? does it have a spec to fit in?

 

If I recall..was there not a write up on clips that could be used for the calipers..purpose was to put "outward" pressure on the pads..to prevent the pads from dragging after the brakes were applied..the clip was in a "W" shape..one of the "veteran" members wrote about this,but sorry,I can't recall who..as far as the new rotors and pads,did you clean them before installation(rotors)..as mentioned brake clean will fix that ..my .02..

 

Blow out the brake dust and rough up the face of the pads with some sand paper. That may work for awhile, but high-performance pad do tend to squeak more than the OEMs.

 

I'm NOT using shims with my HAWK pads, but I did use a bit of anti-squeal. I also had my rotors turned before installation.