General Maintenance & Repairs - squeaky brakes

So my pads are shot, I'm ruining my rotors, I know. I have new pads and rotors sitting in a box ready to go on. Whats been bothering me is the fact that the brakes don't just squeak when I apply them, they squeak all the time and only stop sometimes if I turn hard to either the left or the right (I don't remember which way right now). What is causing this, are my brakes constantly applied just enough to hold the caliper against the rotor? If it is a problem how do I fix it?
any help is appreciated,
thanks

There are "screamers" on your brake pads what will rub against your rotors to notify you when your pads are worn.

You can bend them back to get rid of the noise, but that makes no sense when you have brand new pads and rotors ready to go on.

Just install your new brake components and the noise will be gone.

+1 for the low pad indicators makeing your noise. just change out your pads and rotors and problem will be fixed.

Yea, it's a problem, YOUR'E TOO LAZY TO REPLACE THE DAMN THINGS!! Drive it up here to Detroit, I'll take care of it for ya...

+2 for the screamers cutting a nice groove into your rotors.

The calipers naturally push the pads together to a preset resistance even when the brakes aren't pressed, so yes the pads are always pressed against the rotors a little bit. If you ever do brakes and you use the c-clamp to depress the calipers you'll notice that once you take that clamp off you only have a limited amount of time before they close enough to where you have to use the clamp again to open them back up.

They are telling you to change them, so change them....problem solved.

Peace,
Craig.

Yeah, they are called wear indicator tabs. They are scraping on the unsmooth/untrurned part of the rotor so it sounds like hell. They usually start out making a small noise when turning and then get worse. They make a bad noise so you will do something about it before things get worse. And if you change the pads at the first noise you can prevent damage to the rotors. But the truth is you need new, or newly turned rotors each time you change the pads. And if you need to make a really hard stop, you could be only a couple hard stops away from the "Oh Shit" moment. Brake change time. It's not hard.

YOUR'E TOO LAZY TO REPLACE THE DAMN THINGS!!
Who are you to say I'm too lazy to do anything? I was simply trying to find out if there is any other work I need to do while I replace my brakes before I scratch grooves in the new rotors.

To everyone else, thank you very much for the info, I had no idea about low pad indicators and the fact that the pads are naturally pushed together. You learn something new everyday!

So my pads are shot, I'm ruining my rotors, I know. I have new pads and rotors sitting in a box ready to go on.

Mebbe that's what gave me the thought...

+++1 on the pad wear indicators. And change 'em out, it's not hard.