This is not a whining thread...please read on:
All I had to do yesterday was rotate 2 tires. Instead, I had to replace a caliper assembly and bleed the system. So a half-hour driveway folly turned into a 4 hour CF.
Seems like I have to change calipers and brackets due to frozen slider pins at every tire rotation. That's about every 10 months I need to drop ~$100-$200 on one or both rear caliper/bracket assemblies and my time to R&R and bleed the system, (triple that if you take it to a shop). I have a 1995 Grand Cherokee with 230K miles with ORIGINAL calipers. See anything wrong here?

I've tried everything short of re-machining/redesigning this assembly and sleeving the brackets with SS304 and spinning up the lathe to make 18/8 pins. No grease works, marine or any other, no anti-seize works copper or nickel. RTV around the boot doesn't work. Regreasing at each tire rotation has failed...GAH! (visualize a white flag or large box of dynamite).

How long have we all been dealing with this frozen pin(s) problem? Since 1999? How many of you didn't notice it until it wipes out the caliper, rotor and worse the rear axle seal from the heat? That's just awesome, isn't it?

No other "durable-goods" manufacturer that I know of can ignore problems with faulty stagnant designs for such extended periods of time and get away with it. (likely because no lawsuits have been brought forth). There are several other recurring idiosyncrasies on these so-called "Bar Setting" "No We Are The Bar"(sic) Ford Tough Trucks that get the blind eye from dear old Henry that have the same duration of being faulty with ZERO attempts at improved engineering...1999-2016, that's 17-18 years, not sure with the 17s. A little slider pin brings down a giant. Unacceptable! Sad that a so-called Quality auto manufacturer lets these somewhat small annoyances go that long.

I pose the question; Has anyone out there found a solution to resolve this problem? Not a band-aid approach to extend the inevitable but a permanent fix?? Is there another aftermarket bracket available that someone actually applied some real engineering too?? Has anyone performed the above-mentioned machine work with success?? If so I see a lucrative business venture in your near future.

Anyway, this inst meant to be a gripe but rather a collaborative continuous improvement engineering exercise. It looks like the solution is up to us.

 

 

Dave great info in using Ti as a thermal barrier. Love hearing about the old school race days.
But the root cause here isn't the heat. It's the end result of pins oxidizing in their bores. Once the pins freeze the caliper no longer floats in/out with hydraulic psi. It usually freezes in the clamped or semi clamped position which keeps the pads partially or fully applied thus causing excessive frictional heat. Normal brake system heat can be dissipated when the system is functioning properly. Its this super heat that melts everything down so efficiently. No amount of secondary air cooling or thermal isolation/insulation will prevent that with the temps this system will see with the pin or caliper piston failure.

 

 

Those are thermal barriers to prevent brake fluid boil. It's what Akebono designed initially for both front and rear on the '99-04 calipers and brackets they supplied to Ford in this application. Late in the '99-04 production the pad attached noise insulators had raised ears to just protect the boots.



Bushing the brackets has to redone on a mill not a drill press to maintain the parallelism.

 

I've not had a frozen slide pin since the truck was new, 205k miles. But I've been hyper about the pins.

What locations?