New Pads and Rotors and now my brakes drag.

luciusad2004 · Sep 21, 2011

Hey all, I changed my pads and Rotors today in the rear and now they drag.

The car moves but I can tell the brakes are dragging and I can just barely hear the pads sliding across the rotors. I took it around the block and then back to my garage and when I got back I could smell the pads burning.

The Drivers side was pretty bad when i pulled the old stuff off. The inner pad was pretty much flat but the outer pad looked barely used.
The Passenger side seemed to wear a bit more evenly.

I got it back in my garage and took the driver side apart again to look at it.
Firstly I attempted to bleed the brake, but when I cracked the bleeder it didn't really squirt out much brake fluid, It just sort of oozed out the top and was done before i even had a chance to react to it.

I noticed that the top slider was stuck so I pounded it out but it still doesn't want to move as much as the bottom slider but it's not seized anymore. The boot was torn so I assume there's corrosion in the Caliper bracket. I assume this is why the brakes were wearing unevenly in the first place.

Lastly I looked at the ebrake cable to see if maybe the ebrake was stuck but the cable popped off easily so it looks like it's not stuck at all.

I haven't had a chance to tear the passenger side apart yet as I was getting really frustrated and had to walk away. Does anyone have any idea what might be wrong or what I might have done wrong?

2000BlackCoupe · Sep 21, 2011

when i was changing my passenger side caliper, i noticed it rubbed a TINY bit, and asked my dad. he said very minimal, unnoticeable (while driving) rubbing is normal. but ive never really smelled my brakes while driving around

luciusad2004 · Sep 21, 2011

Mine actually caused my rotors to heat up and turn blue along the inner most edge.

I took another look at it and it seems like the pad itself was stuck to the point were it wouldn't move away from the rotor. I took the two metal shims out that sit in the caliper bracket and it seems to be a bit better but I'm not sure if thats safe or not. Should the pads move easily in to the caliper bracket? When I Put them in the first time I had to pound them in with a mallet.

2000BlackCoupe · Sep 21, 2011

when i did mine, the pads slid out with minimal effort. sounds like something is seized somewhere

luciusad2004 · Sep 21, 2011

I think it's because the caliper bracket is heavily corroded. I can get the caliper itself off but the pads don't want to let go of the bracket. I had to hammer them out and then hammer the new ones in. Maybe I'll just take the shims off for now and them eventually get a new set of brackets.

Edit: Tried to take out the shims. The driver side seems to be ok, the passenger side is still tight. It does have a stuck slider pin though so I might try to unstick it on saturday. Hopefully that does it.