When car is parked after driving there is a strong electrical or brake smell coming from the outside of the car. It is not noticed while driving or inside the car. I'm wondering if anyone else has experienced this or any insight to what it might be as we can't determine where it's coming from? Thanks for any help!
welcome! how many miles on her? after a drive, feel each wheel to see if ones hotter than the others. is the hand brake working properly?
Thank you for the quick reply! She has almost 70,000 miles on her and she had a complete brake job at 66,374 miles. I am the original owner and she has been well maintained. I don't have a hand brake and I haven't checked the wheels after driving. I will do that.
A recent brake job at 66 k miles.... Did an inspection reveal an issue and lead to the brake job? Did they replace pads, rotors, lube pins? I believe what @bisco meant was the parking or emergency brake being stuck, this leading to premature rear brake wear and causing the smell. Or do you live in a hilly area where you may use the brakes hard prior to exiting the car? Recent brake work and knowing why it was needed might help in diagnosis. For reference, the Prius uses regenerative braking, so the pads are not used as much, so the pads should last 100 k miles or much longer. Here is a picture of my brakes at 142 k miles(2010 Prius II) : Fronts: Rears: If the pins stay lubed and the brakes are inspected frequently, You shouldn't have an issue. Keep us posted
There's a "foot" hand brake, same thing. Make sure it's locking then releasing is the thing. The brake job might have caused the problem: the rear brakes with integrated parking brake mechanism (aka: hand brake, emergency brake) have pins on the inner pad backing plate that MUST be between the spokes on the caliper piston face. It is very easy to reassemble the rear brakes without doing this. If this pin is riding up on one of the spokes the pad will become extremely skewed, and the rear brakes will constantly drag. An easy way to check is (on level ground, preferably concrete slab): 1. Securely chock the front wheels. 2. Release parking brake. 3. Raise rear of car using rear-central jacking point, till wheels are off the ground. (Alternately: use supplied scissor jack and raise one side at a time.) 4. Try turning the wheel. It should be nearly free turning. A slight amount of drag is normal, due to disc brake design, but if it's very hard to turn you likely have misaligned pin issue. An even easier first check: use @bisco 's check for overheating wheels after a drive. I'll attach Toyota Repair Manual brake instruction. Note in particular the rear brake caliper piston alignment instruction:
Just wanted to follow up. A week ago my mechanic checked brake temp on the four tires and the left rear was hotter. Today. He replaced the caliper and subsequently the pads again due to the caliper sticking and causing them to prematurely wear. Up till the last 10,000 miles I had been driving in intense rush hour traffic both ways which is probably why they wore out sooner than average. Thanks for all your suggestions and hopefully this will have taken care of current issue.
