Puddle now breaking issues

[AnotherOldJeepGuy]

I was on my way home a yesterday and not far from the house there was a puddle, maybe 12ft long, at the deepest probably 4" or so.  It was a side alley coming up on a stop sign so I was going pretty slow, probably 10-15mph.  After going through the puddle I continued home, which was about another 100 yards or so.  By the time I got to my driveway there was quite a moaning sound from FR side with noticeable vibration when brakes were applied (this is the side the puddle was on).  I eased to a stop in my normal parking place.  I was assuming that since this was obviously because something go wet, once it dried out it would be back to where it was before the puddle.  Just went out and moved back and forth a dozen times or so with varying amount of brake force.  Still making varying degrees of groaning noise with vibrations.  And I think RF is actually locking up as I get close to a stop.

 

What got messed up by getting wet?

 

Worth noting here is I replaced rotors, bearings and pads about a year ago to get rid of a moan in the front while driving, which was successful and all has been fine until creeping through this puddle.  Oh, there was no pothole in the puddle, it was a smooth slow run through the puddle.

 

Thanks

[AnotherOldJeepGuy]

Heading over to O'Reilly's to get some new slide pin boots.  I put in new pins when I did the rotors and pads but didn't put in new boots.  There's not a lot of moving parts, and even less that water "should be" able to get into.  So I'm doing the easiest thing first, re-lube the slide pins and put on new rubber boots.  Will probably re-lube where the pads rest on the caliper also.  It that doesn't do it, I may swap in a new caliper since I don't have the tools to rebuild the ones I have.  But I'm hoping this does it .

[AnotherOldJeepGuy]

For what it's worth and for future reference here, here's what I ended up doing and things seems to be back to normal for the moment.  Although I don't have a lot of confidence I can drive through another puddle or even in a hard rain now.

 

I bought new slide pin boots, but they were not the right shape, so didn't use them.  I did pull the pins on FR and re-lube them.  They were pretty dry.  At the same time I put a bit more lube where the pads slide on the caliper (although I just tried to work some in rather than removing the pads.)  This seemed to take care of the brakes grabbing, but there was still a lot of creaking.

 

I pulled off the axle bearing cap to look at the grease in there.  It looked fine and I didn't pull the rotor.  I did notice that the bearing were a tiny bit loose.  Was not expecting this since there's a locking "nut" with a cotter pin that should have kept them where they were, and they didn't have any wiggle when I put them in.  Either way I snugged the bearing nut, which probably amounted to maybe 1/4-1/3 revolution and this took the minor wiggle out.  I  put thing back together again and the creaking went away.

 

I really don't think the bearings where part of the problem.  What I think more than that is that the grease I added to where the pads come in contact with the caliper, or the added grease to the pins, or both, needed a few runs back and forth in my driveway for the grease to get where it needed to be fully and that is really the fix.  But I can't prove it.

 

Now I guess I need to find a big puddle to run through and see if this starts over.  Here in Texas we are in a fairly good drought so I don't know how long till another puddle shows up for the test.

 

Even though the LF was not experiencing any issue, I went ahead and re-lubed those also, and snugged up the axle nut since this side and loosed slightly as well.  Probably only a 1/4 turn at most this side.

 

Assuming the water got in to the slide pins and started all this, the need to replace the boots is still something I'll do if I can find the right ones.  If not I may go ahead with new calipers, especially if I can't find the right boots.  But for the moment and probably at least until it rains again, I appear to have a stable system.