Always sticky disc brakes

[pizzaman09]

I've owned many cars and the only common problem I've had with each and every one of them are sticking disc brake calipers.  The result is an overheated brake and lots of vibration.  

Does anyone have tips to prevent this from happening?  This has happened to me on the following vehicles:

02 BMW M5 (front caliper)

99 Oldsmobile Eighty Eight (front caliper)

62 Austin Healey Sprite (front caliper)

13 Mini Cooper S (all 4 calipers independent times)

90 Jeep Comanche (front caliper)

99 BMW M3 (all 4 calipers multiple sets and brands, OEM, Centric, Wilwood)

09 Honda Civic Si (front caliper)

 

I'm starting to think I'm cursed or just doing something wrong.  It seems that most of the time the issue is corrosion related, but a couple of those vehicles never ever see salt.

 

Are there any tips to prevent from having disc brake calipers not retracting?

 

[Pete M]

lube the guides religiously and get new calipers if the old ones are all corroded.

[jdog]

Lube the slides, also make sure the hoses are not bad

[Salvagedcircuit]

For the stock style comanche front calipers to work well you have to thoroughly inspect them. Each side should have:

-a teflon sleeve per glide pin

-glide pins of equal, correct length

-two brake pad clips per side

-glide pin rubber boot

-glide pin lube

 

Without any of these parts, your brakes will not work optimally. If your calipers were replaced recently, they may be missing teflon sleeves. I purchased several newly remanufactured ones from autozone that were missing these sleeves. I returned all three and went with one from federated auto parts, but I went through two calipers there too, because one had abysmal brake fitting threads. Without these sleeves the braking mechanism has far too much slop. This is a very bad thing.

 

Look for any imperfections in the glide pin channel and debur it!

It's not uncommon to see casting imperfections that greatly impact glide pin movement performance. Grab a file and remove these imperfections. Use purple or white silicone based glide pin lube, lube it all up but don't get any on the pads or rotors. The slide pins should move with ease through a newly lubed rubber boot and sleeve. It should take little effort to do so. If it's not smooth like melted butter, clean up that cast glide pin hole

 

If you are missing these sleeves, rugged ridge still sells em. part# 52001701

otherwise, the inserts are 2 thousandths thick Teflon material that you can easily purchase from mcmaster-carr. I have confirmed this and purchased both, they are exactly the same thickness and surface smoothness. You can cut the Teflon sheet with a scissor.

 

The PO of my comanche installed the wrong sized caliper pins on me that punctured the brake pads. Derp. I can go on about this for a while, which I'll writeup one day. It's honestly incredible the part quality of newly reman'd calipers. One of the photos shows a reused pitted cylinder with new seals. How would that ever seal? Returned. I had one with a rough-as-sandpaper hole for the banjo fitting to bolt up to. How would that ever seal?

A1 cardone should be sanctioned, put on a stake and burned for their crimes against ASME and all automotive parts.

 

[gogmorgo]

Brake calipers seizing is VERY common.

On the fleet at work and personal vehicles I make a habit of checking the callipers every oil change. You should be able to wiggle the calliper a bit. If it doesn’t want to budge I pull everything and lube the glide pins. I’m generous with the brake grease, not everyone is but my attitude is that the more grease there is the less space there is for water. Speaking of which you also want to make sure there’s no damage to the pin bushings, the little dust boots. Badly seized callipers as a rule have holes in the pin rubbers.

This also goes for new or reman callipers. You don’t know how long that thing’s been on the shelf or what cheap grease they used. I just installed two reman callipers on the back of a 2011 F250 today and both of them had stuck pins right out of the box, the grease was just about solidified. 
The other thing to watch for is that the pads don’t stick in their grooves. When you’re changing pads it’s important to clean any dirt or corrosion off the surfaces the pads slide along, even if there’s shims for them. I also put a thin coat of grease where the shims sit before I clip them into the calliper to delay them rust jacking the shim in place and binding the pad in the calliper.

It also can sometimes be necessary to take some material off the tabs on the brake pads so they actually move in their grooves. Either with a file or a grinder. Usually just the coating on the pad but sometimes even the steel itself if I’ve been stuck using the cheapest pads. 

[pizzaman09]

Some solid advice here.  I've can't think of a time that I've come across a set of stuck slide pins, I'll definitely check it out though.   A few of the calipers I listed are fixed dual piston calipers, so they don't have slide pins.

 

Usually, I've found stuck pistons due to corrosion and haven't figured a way to help prevent that.  One of the challenges I run into is my twin brother drives 100 miles round trip for work each day.  He runs our cars on basically desolate PA and NY highways.  NY in particular uses an aggressive salt on I-86 and he doesn't really have to use the brakes during much of the drive.  We are both light with the brake pedal except for in the BMW M3 when we auto cross it.

 

I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one that has had this issue.  I wish I could buy phenolic pistons for all my brakes.

[Pete M]

anything that moves has to move freely.   doesn't have to be stuck-stuck to be sticky enough to cause issues.