Brake Wear Incicator?

[hospitalbuilder]

My 99Q continues to make a squeaking sound when I am driving. The squeaks pace is consistent with how fast I am traveling, faster more rapid, slower less frequently. It goes away completely when I apply the brakes. I posted this earlier and was told that this was the brake wear indicator. Counter intuitive to me, since the squeak goes away when I apply the brakes, but OK, I went with it. I opened the brakes up and checked the pads, but they seem to have more life left in them, plenty of the center groove left (I think I put those new pads on about two years or 30,000 miles ago I did not turn the rotors at that point).

I wondered if it was the rears (the 99 has drums), but a search here lead me to believe that the rears do not have a wear indicator and have a very long service life, much longer than the fronts.

Any thoughts? Also, anyone have any tips and advice regarding the rear brake job with drums? I did a search and could not find anything on here. I was thinking about going ahead and knocking that out as well. It would be easy enough to replace the pads, but I do not want to do that if that is not the issue.

Any help is, of course, greatly appreciated.

[Buzzman]

You are right about the drum brakes. They do not have wear indicators.They also seem to last forever.I still have the original drum brakes in the back of my '02 Pathfinder, after almost 200,000 kms. However, I'm on my third set of front pads.As for the squeal in the fronts, they are set up to squeal early, while there is still lots of pad left. It's a safety thing.What you can do is bend the squealer back a little so that they don't touch the rotor anymore. This will get you a few more miles out of the pads.Just don't bend them back too far. You'll forget you did it, and then you'll end up with metal on metal, and ruining the rotors.