2011 Mazda 6, 116,000 miles, automatic. About a year ago, I replaced my rear brake pads and rotors because the left hand rear outside pad had seized and the pad was gone, grinding the metal backing of the pad on the rotor. (Yes, I know that I should have addressed it earlier than that, but life got in the way.)
While replacing the pads and rotors, I had taken the caliper off as well and cleaned and lubed things including slide pins, boots, caliper itself, etc. and took a wire brush on a drill to the rust. It was my first time doing anything with brakes. This past weekend, I inspected the brakes and the outside pad on that same wheel is under 2 mm while all of the other pads are >8 mm. Clearly I didn’t solve the issue.
If I replace the entire caliper, pads, and rotors, is that likely to fix my issue or could there be something else going on? Should I be checking something else? I don’t want to go through the worth of replacing everything just to find out that there’s something else wrong.