Wife's explorer (07 limited 4.6L AWD, 96k miles) has deep gouge in passenger rotor less than 1k miles after replacing rotors/pads with OEM. Checked caliper and pads, can't seem to figure out how this excessive wear is happening.

My 06 F150 has springs to keep pads off rotors when not braking. 07 Explorer does not. Am I missing parts? She's had the truck since new, all maintenance etc. done at dealer before she met me. My thought is that by following the setup I found when I swapped the parts, I only kept the problem in the new pads/rotors.

 

If you're getting wear on one pad then the caliper is not sliding on the mounting bracket. Check the slides and the pins.

 

At the very least I would grease the slide. But by your description, the caliper is not sliding correctly, and that puts a lot more wear on one side than the other.

 

Also check for damaged/collapsed flex brake line...