Hi all,

I just finished getting my brakes back in good working order after a long and painful search for the problem. I do have a few questions about some of the things I found and whether they are typical.

1. On both the front spindles and the one read hub I removed it appears that the bearings inner sleeve was spinning on the spindles. They weren't loose enough to wobble but if you lightly rotated the bearing the inner sleeve would rotate also. There was some evidense of scoring on the spindle also. Is this typical? The bearings have never been run dry and I haven't had any issue with them since I bought the truck new. It now has 160k on the odometer. I used some Locktite sleeve retainer to stop it from happening but am having trouble understanding what causes this to happen if the bearings haven't seized or overheated. Any ideas?

2. When I pressed the front brake caliper pistons back into the calipers the first one on each caliper went in nice and smooth. The second one took a bit more effort. I have no explanation for why the second one on both calipers would be a problem. I'm guessing I did the piston closest to the brake line first on both claipers. Any ideas?

3. When I took the front calipers off the slide pins were not frozen but they were so sticky it was quite an effort to get them out. I did manage it with no tools but it was tough. When I got them out some of the grease had hardened on the pin so I figure there's where my problem is. When I put them back together I greased the crap out of them with wheel bearing grease and slid them back into the newly cleaned and siliconed rubber sleeves. Problem is on just sitting for a little while before I installed the caliper they became sort of stiff. This is a 2wd and it's just a steel pin riding in a rubber sleeve. I don't get why they would stiffen up with fresh grease. The calipers would still slide back and forth once installed but I'm worried they will stick again in short order. Am I missing something here?

Thanks in advance for any help you can give me.

Jeff

 

Doesn't anyone have any input of this?

Jeff

 

When I did my brakes last year my spindles had some scoring on them as well. I think its normal.

Cant help ya with the caliper.

 

That's normal for the caliper your suppose to push both pistons in at the dame time.

On the pins you could have too much grease in the boots.

 

Wheel bearing grease is the wrong grease for disc brake sliding parts. It will do exactly what you experienced. We had the wrong shop do the brakes on one of my wife's trucks, and about 8 months later, both calipers weren't returning all the way. Pulled the pins and found the same thing; sticky grease. Cleaned them up and re-lubed with real brake caliper grease (supposedly Sil-Glyde silicone/glycerine grease will work too), and they've been fine since. Dunno why it takes several months before the grease gets that sticky, but it does.

So get that bearing grease out of there; shoot some brake cleaner into the boots (wear a face guard, 'cuz it might shoot back out in some random direction; don't ask how I know that...).

 

I take it the real brake caliper grease is different than the brake grease you get to put on the back of the pads to prevent brake noise? I believe that's what I used last time on the pins which is what came out hard. I tried the wheel bearing grease hoping it would fare better. I'll take a look at the auto parts store and see what I can find. Thanks for the info all of you!!

Jeff

 

Okay, I removed my calipers and removed the wheel bearing grease I put on the pins. I got some Locktite brake grease and reinstalled the calipers. It seemed like this funny vibration I was getting had gone away when I drove it and everything was back to normal. However, when I did this I noticed that my PS brand new brake disk was worn much more than the DS. On the DS I could still see the hash pattern that's put on the disk. On the PS not only were the hash marks gone but I could feel a bit of a ridge at the outside edge of the disk. The pins in the PS were much harder to get out than the DS but neither moved freely as I would have expected. Anyways, I go to drive the truck the next day and the vibration is back which just isn't right. I'm going to remove the claipers again and check how easy the calipers slide on the pins. How easy would you expect them to slide? I suppose this could be a problem with a caliper piston being stuck or a collapsed brake hose. I'm pretty sure I replaced both hoses not too long ago but it is the original caliper. The drivers side caliper was replaced recently. Any thoughts what would be the best thing to try next?

Jeff