When bringing your car to a stop, it may briefly cross one's mind that there is a mechanism at work that pushes one thing against another, ultimately bringing the vehicle to a halt, as and when you need to.
You may even have heard home-based mechanics talking about brake shoes and brake pads and other words that relate to bringing vehicles to a safe halt, and these words being bandied about may even sound like they mean the exact same thing. But this is not true. Brake shoes and brake pads are essentially two different parts of a whole braking system in your car.
We all know that brake pads' primary function is to slow down or stop the motion of a moving machine or vehicle. But do you understand what a brake pad itself does to stop or slow down a vehicle or a machine?
This is the part of the braking system in your car that is the rubber lining inside the caliper, which is part of the large metal structure clamped to the side of the rotor, located at your car's wheels.
Brake pads convert the vehicle's motion into kinetic energy, which then turns the heat into thermal energy by using friction, causing the car to slow down and finally to stop.
Brake shoes, on the other hand, are located in the brake drum system and look like a curved piece of metal (slightly like a horseshoe), with friction material lining one side of it. Thus, when the driver applies their brakes, a cylinder wheel within the brake drum system pushes the brake 'shoe' outwards and against the inside of the drum.
An integral part of the correct working of your car's brake system is the combined effort of brake pads and brake shoes because the brake shoes help to stop the car by pushing outwards and brake pads then stop the motion by moving closer together. Because the brake pads are around the rotor disc, the caliper squeezes the brake pads together so that they are pressing against the rotor disc and the car stops safely.
When you need brake repair, bring your car into our auto repair shop today!