Please help! I have two problems. I have RABS I on my rear brakes and brand new 33" BFG A/T tires all around--89 F350 XLT 4x4 crew, 460, C6. The right rear tire locks up all the time when I hit the brakes, if the road is wet then it locks up all the time every time no matter how lightly I tap the brakes. It's so bad that I'm actually worse off having brakes on that tire than no brakes at all-I would rather have a ski to stop with! There is no service light coming on for the brakes and the yellow ABS light comes on normally for 2 seconds at engine start up then dissapears. Any idea what could be causing this problem?

The other problem is a huge popping noise coming from my front end or midsection of the truck sometimes when I turn (once every 1 hour of driving or so). It's hard to reproduce though, so I can't find the problem. I put in a new steering box, kingpins (ya that was a fun fix), wheel and spindle bearings for other reasons--so kinpins on out are in top shape as is the steering box. I checked the various ball joints and they look o.k., but then again how do you properly check a balljoint?--they seem tight by hand or by leveraging them a bit with a bar. What could this irritating noise be? It's ridiculously loud, but everything looks great under there. I can't find the source of the noise! Agghhh! I can feel it in my bones when the mystery popping noise happens!

Thanks,
J

 

Jman,

Last year I was having wheel lockups the first time I stopped after being parked at work for the day, or leaving the house in the morning. Kind of surprised me every time, but all was fine after that first stop.

There are quite a few posts on this topic and after reading and doing some replying it seemed to be a common but not serious problem. One member recommends replacing the brake cylinders which fixed the problem for him.

In your case it sounds more serious if its happening all the time, and I don't know if the larger tire size comes into play - but I thought I'd mention the cylinders.

-rlp 1989 F150 2x4, stock wheels & tires.

 

Thanks,
I finally took the brakes of this morning and found that all 4 of the bolts holding the backing plate to the axle had worked loose, a few turns of the wrench and of the drum, fixed the problem.

 

Wow, that's a little scary.

My guess on the popping noise is either the slip yoke on the transfer case is dry or a loose tranny to crossmember bolt.

 

I have had a almost identical problem occur two different ways. On my 84, the wheel cylinder was leaking. The first stop always locked the wheel since the brake shoe was covered in brake fluid. On my 94, I found that the aftermarket parking brake cables don't have enough force to pull away from the drum after being set. This made the rear brake on one side lock up during the first stop every time I drove it. I found that popping the Ebrake once or twice cured it....but the cables still suck. I'm not sure if my parking brake adjuster has too much preload...it's not adjustable unfortuantely.

Bryan

 

All,

Just wanted to clarify something in my earlier post - I meant wheel cylinder, not "brake cylinder".

I think there's something to it that lockups may be fixable by replacing the cylinders...probably are leaking like explained in the last post.

My lockups have been intermittant along with the ABS warning light sometimes staying illuminated, sometimes not. Its 2 problems but they are on again/off again.


rlp

89 F150 2x4

 

So I had a loose brake backing plate for the brake lockup problem, it's fixed now and I think I just fixed the popping noise. It seems the wheel bearings were very loose, over 1 cm of play in the front hub, so they were popping as they moved when I turned hard. I wonder what else is loose on this truck. Thanks for the help everyone.