anybody run w/o the shims behind the front brake pads?

Just wondering, because the ones I have are very warped- to the point that they cause the pads to touch the rotors. my last track day with the hawk blues got the brakes hot enough to warp and oxidize the shims. Nobody seems to know if they are available separately. I have a new set of stock street pads and rotors on the car without them now, and am assuming they will transfer too much heat to the caliper pistons when I swap back to blues for the track. Just doing the break in of my new engine so I'm not worried now, but will have to do something when I go to the track. Is there anything I can use to make these myself that would work better than stainless (thinking some hi tech non compressible 22 guage insulative material) or if I can't buy them separately should I just make a set out of stainless? It looks like one is stainless and the second shim is regular steel with some sort of insulating coating...

 

I believe I got new shims with mazda pads but other than that, junkyards or on the forum under parts there are a couple of people parting fd's

 

If you buy the brake pads from a Mazda dealer, they will come with shims. If you don't they may not.
I bought mine from a parts store which didn't come with the shims and tried to go without because my old ones had cracks. The squeeling from the brakes drove me nuts.
I ended up tearing the brakes apart to put the shims back on.

 

You don't need to run with the shims. But, as stated, they will squeal like crazy. The newer Hawk pads should come with the shim built into the pad ... at least the HP+'s do. The squeal is still there, but not nearly as irritating as it is without the shim at all. I've tried all sorts of stuff to eliminate the brake squeal .... I gave up ... it's just part of the territory for performance pads.

 

Hawks should come with the shims built on.

As far as I know they are just anti-squeal shims, so they aren't necessary as long as you dont mind a little squealing. You can get generic ones at autozone, and trim them to be the right shape, or at least close enough. I tihnk a couple dollars is all they cost.

 

I just put a bunch of anti-squeal on my HP+ pads. They still make a little noise on occasion but not too bad.

I believe the purpose of the shims is entirely for noise purposes, there should be no problem in running without.

 

Oh and to answer the orginal question, I run w/o the shims on the front brakes. No problems, squeaks a little more, but not to often. I jsut use alot of brake lube on the back side of the pads and on the guide pins.

 

Mazdaformance has them available seperately:

http://www.mazdaformance.com/Merchan...egory_Code=420

I'm sure you could get the same through Ray @ Malloy or whatever other Mazda Parts dealer also

 

If this is the adhesive "gunk" I tried that too. It was successful........for a couple weeks Squeal came back.

 

no is not adhesive, its more like high temp grease.

 

To stop the squeal with out the shims you can bevel the leading edge of the pad. as you do with a turning tool used on a lathe. I do not understand this but my mechanic said he does it for squealers .The squeal is caused be a high frequency vibration, as the pad rubs the rotor .

 

Haven't driven the car yet so I don't know if they squeak, but I tried to order from the dealer and he wasn't sure if he could get them separately, but ordered what he thought would get them to me anyway (he couldn't tell if they were a separate PN from the pads or not), I'll find out by the end of the week...

Thanks again

Tom

 

I have always run my Hawk Blues, front and back without the shims. They used to squeel but now they don't. I only leave them in for my track days and run stock pads with the shims otherwise. Never had any problems doing it that way.