My 2004 Kodiak (recently purchased) has developed a squeak in the rear brake. Starts after travel on dusty trails etc. which hard to avoid of course. Goes away for awhile after washing and/or blowing out with compressed air. Have tried a De-Squeak spray from Auto Zone but only worked for awhile. Any ideas out there for a newbie....
THANKS

 

They pretty much all do it. Its a common complaint, and if you do a search, youll see lots of others with the same issue.
Depending on how much you want to get into, theres afew things you can do. Try using the rear brake a bit harder. The squeel seems to get better with use, and once the pads have worn a bit, it gets better.
Softer pads will be quieter, but will wear out much sooner. The pads that are in there, are a compromise between performance and wear. In order for the pads to have some type of longer life, they need to be made from a harder compound, to resist mud and dirt.
Some have had luck with removing the pads, and using the stop squeek for disk brakes (auto stores have it).
Mine did alot of squeeling when it was newer, and as the miles built up...its much better.

 

Did you buy it new,if so the brakes might not have been branish correctly ; the factory manual should've had the procedjure for this breakin' my dealer had already done this for me when i bouight it ! , the manual say's get the quad's speed up to about 35 mph then hit the brakes bringing it to 5 mph then get it back up to 35 mph and repeat this 5 0r 6 time's to properly seat the brakes to caliper's and drum's this should be done when you're replacing old shoe's and pad's, It could still be done by this take drum or caliper off and with som emory cloth scuff up the shoe's, pad's, drum's and caliper's , then do the above procedjure !!........................williebee

 

we fixed it by drilling a few holes in the roter. (and then polished it back up with brake roter polish kit)

Works like a champ now... no more noise...

 

Great - Thanks for all the ideas. Yes - I bought it used with only 266 miles on it. I will try the brake after getting up to speed method first and see what happens after a while. From there will try the other ideas. Nice to know that this is fairly common problem and something that can be worked on. Thanks Again!