Check all the caliper pins on new calipers. Sometimes they are pretty Chinsy with the lube. Good points from above on the backing plate, the rust between the sides of the disks causing poor ventilation and turning rotors and the hard spots that develop. All of these things contribute to the disks being less able to absorb and disapate heat required of a braking system. Rather than neverseaze, I think you should buy the caliper pin lube which is a high temp lube specifically for this purpose. It's cheap and it s good to have a tube around. I like to do my slide pins in the fall, ussually when rotating tires anyway.

 

Napa has a ceramic based slide pin lube. It's made by Permatex.

 

Good to know, I plan to pick some up at the local NAPA store(assuming they have it)

 

Ten years ago I would have given the advice to stay with the stock silicone brake grease. It has the right viscosity, lubrication, and most importantly, will not degrade the boots like a petroleum based product will.

The last 5 years I've been using Permatex anti-seize "Countermans Helper" and it has worked fine used sparingly so it doesn't degrade the boots. And I've extended by relube time to two years. Now admittedly at the rate I relube the pins it would be rare for me to have a pin issue.

But here is my advice if you do have a problem with rusted pins. Rust forms off the bracket, not the pins, so it's imprerative to get those bore surfaces clean and lubed. To clean off any rust I use a 10mm ball hone in an electric drill. You don't want to excessively open the bore however. If not rusted, I use a brass brush I got from a gun shop, 10mm or .40 cal if I remember correctly. Then I wash out the bores using acetone in a wash bottle.

I then use the another bore brush to apply my lubricant to the bores surfaces as coating the pins doesn't necessarily get the bore surface fully coated and protected from oxidation. After I put a light coating on the pins I then check how well the pins slide in the bore before adding the boots to see if I need to adjust the level of lube, spinning them slowly as I push them in to make sure any grease is well distributed.

Just a note, I'm working off memory that it's a 10mm size so please check if your going to purchase anything.

 

Appreciate the info again Jack, would have never thought of that approach. No shortage of gun barrel brushes so I will be trying this approach when the time comes to clean up and lube things again.

 

In case you don't know it, Napa also gives 10% discounts to vets as does Auto Zone and O'Reillys.

 

A bit late to the thread but thought I'd throw my 2 cents in. I just did brakes on my F350 last spring. I had a warped front rotor and wasn't impressed with the stopping under a heavy load. I upgraded to Powerstop drilled/slotted rotors all the way around and it was a huge improvement.

I pull heavy loads quite often and used to be nervous when I got into traffic. Not anymore. It was an expensive upgrade, around $400 just for the parts, but a lot cheaper than wrecking because I couldn't stop in time.

 

Good grief I hope that is some good stuff. I got hosed 9$ for two little packets, crazy.

Anyhoo, passenger side inboard pad was worn down to the metal and beyond, outboard pad looked almost new. Boy that rotor was a BEAR to get off.
Those 18mm caliper bolts are TIGHT! Thank goodness for breaker bars, I was actually worried I might round them off.
Drivers side went much easier and stuff looked better on that side.
Ebrakes both looked ok but I will be looking at backing plates next couple years I am sure of that.
I ended up just replacing everything, should be good for a little while now!
All in all it's not a bad job. I've never minded brake jobs.

 

I bought the bottle. A lot cheaper that way.

 

I've never used that Permatex product, but I guess they jumped on the "Ceramic" buzz word trend and probably use Boron Nitride in a silicone base grease. I just want to repost that lining the pins is easy for all of us to do, but the real issue other then sliding lubrication is to get the rusting surface of the brackets pin bores coated and protected as best we can.

And yes those bolts take a lot of torque! On of our test driver/mechanics tore a biceps ligament removing one of those using a long breaker bar, and that was with the vehicle on a lift where the body position was better then on Jack stands. After that we had written into our EHS procedure for working on these trucks to always use an impact wrench to remove the bolts.

 

Well, I was about to get the impact out hehe.......was at a different shop with no air and feeling stubborn. I did end up pulling a few muscles, it's hard to get good leverage under that area. I think I went to around 125 ft/lbs, seems I read that somewhere that they needed that setting.
I did take the brackets loose on the new calipers and checked the slide pins, took them out and made darn sure they had proper lube and rotated them several times to distribute the grease.

 

The torque value is kind of a gray area. Here are the labels I had installed on the '06 DRW test vehicle at the wheels front and back. Due to our constant flipping of brake components for tests, like ever 4 days, it was a lot easier for the guys to have this data right where they were working, at the wheels.

The values represent what Ford spec'd in the manuals, and the values are for new bolts were specified, like for the brackets. The torque values are higher then plain bolts due to the blue locking compound on these new bolt's threads. So if you are going to reuse the bolts, which many people do but is against Ford's safety concern, you have to look up the torque value for the specific bolt of that diameter, thread pitch, and grade.



We never measured it, but pulling the bracket retaining bolts is probably in the 250-300lbft range when breaking it loose.

 

I am reopening this thread. I pulled my rear wheels to check the brakes for my next camping adventure. The drive side rear upper caliper piston is sticking. The inner brake pad is showing excessive wear from the one piston that moves freely.

For the experience, I was thinking about pulling out the pistons and putting in the new square o-rings. I have never pulled apart a caliper. I live in California, so the caliper is mostly rust and corrosion free. It's just old. I recently replaced both front calipers, brake pads, right front rotor, and flexible brake lines. Just buttoned it up yesterday and decided to check the rear.

Here's a photo of the worn pads. "Houston, we had a problem here."


notice the excessive wear on the pad to the right.

I am buying new pads. No doubt they will be the last pads I ever buy unless I push this 6.0 to 1,000,000 miles. If I can the caliper working by flipping the o-rings or installing new ones, then I will do that.

 

I found an o-ring repair kit at Rock Auto for less than $5.


Raybestos rear brake caliper service kit.

 

I removed the driver side rear caliper. Looks like it's old, pitted, and corroded. The o-ring on the sticking side was twisted. Maybe the previous owner incorrectly installed it. The boots were in bad shape too.

Time to replace both rear calipers and brake pads. I may replace rotors too as I am so far into this brake job. Flexible brake hose too? Probably. LOL! Funny how 1 front sticking brake caliper leads to replacing nearly everything. I feel pretty good about this brake job. My neighbor stopped by nearly in tears about losing $400k in the stock market. He asked for prayer and we prayed together. My $600 brake job is nothing compared with his suffering.


close up of pitting.

pitting in both left rear brake caliper bores.