Dear Scotty,
I recently replaced the front pads. The vehicle has 63K miles. The old pads were aftermarket pads and there were no anti-squeal shims on the inner or outer pad. I replaced old pads with new OEM Toyota pads. I did not have any shims. Should I buy new toyota shims and install them or am I ok to run without shims?
1998 Toyota RAV4 FWD Automatic
I bought the new OEM pads from Toyota dealership online and didn't think about ordering shims too. The manual clearly shows 2 anti-squeal shims for each pad (inner and outer.) I just assumed (my mistake) that I would reuse the existing shims. Unfortunately my vehicle had after market pad w/o any shims! So, this brake job occured before I became the owner of this vehicle. So I don't know if shims were OE or not.
If they don't make any noise, you don't need them. If necessary, you can buy a small tube of disc brake quiet compound at auto parts stores and use that.
Thank you Doc. I'm going on a long test drive today 🙂 🙂 🙂
@danarello - break them in gently.