Has anyone have this happen and if so what was it. When im driving over 30mph and hit the brakes the car pulls to the left. Now I pulled of both front wheels and removed the calipers to make sure there where free to slide. they where fine I put anti (sezzie (spelling)) on the sliders and put back together took the car for a ride and still pulls Im really hopeing the ABS isn't the prob. any help would be great thanks RonB.
Brake prob.
- Thread starter RonB
- Start date
Not sure if anti-seize is the best thing to put on those pins. But based on your symptoms, you're on the right track. Not to say that something else isn't the problem, but I would look at those pins first. Anyway, the best way to handle potential pin issues is to buy new ones. You can clean and wire wheel them yourself, but those pins can easily jam if they are not perfectly smooth. In addition, you can clean the holes that the pins go into with some solvent. After all the cleaning or new pin purchase, you can grease them with plain old axle grease and reinstall. If that doesn't solve your problem, then you might have a ball joint or tie rod issue. It can get fairly complicated from there. But address those pins first and let us know!
A stuck pin won't cause a car to pull, it will just cause the pads to wear unevenly, plus if the pin was bad, you wouldn't have been able to get it out. Most likely you either have a stuck caliper or you have alignment issues.
I recommend pulling the calipers and "flushing" the brake fluid out. Basically open the bleed screw and compress the caliper piston down to flush the old crappy fluid out. If its hard to compress, than you've found your problem. If everything moves easy than most likely you've got alignment(tow) issues.
I recommend pulling the calipers and "flushing" the brake fluid out. Basically open the bleed screw and compress the caliper piston down to flush the old crappy fluid out. If its hard to compress, than you've found your problem. If everything moves easy than most likely you've got alignment(tow) issues.
Yes, it will. It did it on mine. The pin gets so dirty, scratched, and bent that it intermittantly sticks. One thing I did to temporarily make the issue subside was to push the brake down as hard as I could (stopped, engine running). This seemed to straighten everything out for a while.
My pads wore very evenly even though my pin was sticking.
Since checking for a stuck caliper and replacing the pins are easier to do (and cheaper) than looking into alignment issues, you should do those first. If your alignment hasn't been done in the last 12 months, that should be done anyway. And hopefully, if you find a good shop (not Midas), they can make some evaluations on your suspension components. If any of them are bad enough, they won't even do the alignment because they can't gaurantee it. That would be your litmus test.
sleeper
Former LOD President
Lower control arm bushing. The bushing where the lower control arm connects to the k-member.
If you want to check it, go to an oil change place with a pit, get in the pit and have the oil change guy get in the car, put it in gear, and move forward slowly and hit the brakes over and over again. Shine a flashlight at the bushing, if there is any play, it's shot and you need a new lower control arm.
A pull under braking is usually not a brake problem, in my experience.
If you want to check it, go to an oil change place with a pit, get in the pit and have the oil change guy get in the car, put it in gear, and move forward slowly and hit the brakes over and over again. Shine a flashlight at the bushing, if there is any play, it's shot and you need a new lower control arm.
A pull under braking is usually not a brake problem, in my experience.
Another good point...and fairly easy to check. Though any Mark with over 75K miles needs the entire front end rebuilt anyway...
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The CD will pay for itself when you use it for the first time to fix something.
Did your car pull to the side of the bad pin or did it pull to the other side? I would imagine a bad pin causing a lack in proper braking pressure, which would make the car pull to the opposite side.
Either way...he's already checked the pins, lol.
Anti sieze is sufficient on the pins, thats what I always use because it will prevent rusting components more than the grease will, and the grease will ooze out when it heats up.Regardless of the cause of the issue, its cheap to compress the calipers and see if you have a stickings piston, or just crappy fluid. I'm sure they've got some nice black fluid in them and could use the flush anyways.
Ditto about the strut rod bushing. The front bushing is the common one to go bad, and if you tap the brake while going slow in either reverse or drive, you may hear a knocking noise. If so, than you probably have bad bushings.
Thats what I thought
Thanks for the confirmation! When I made my original post...I meant that a stuck pin won't cause a pull to that side, I should have clarified better. Sorry.Ron,
Go to rockauto.com and get your strut rod bushing KITS there. You will buy ONE kit for the strut rod to K member and ONE kit for the strut rod to lower control arms.
I would verify that they are bad, instead of throwing parts at the car. How did you come to the conclusion that the bushings are bad? Have someone get in the car, and back down your driveway at 2-3mph and have them keep TAP'n the brake on and off and see if one of the front wheels move forward. Than have them drive forward and repeat, if the bushing is bad the wheel should move backwards indicating bushing play.
Careful with rockauto on those parts. I got one of the many DEFECTIVE MOOG strut rod bushing kits. They made the sleeves about 1/4" too long, so they couldn't be tightened down properly. The steering ended up worse than when it started. I ended up removing the sleeves and hacking off 1/4" of material, then it owrked fine. Even the non-defective kits are suspect because they are made of thermoplastic, not polyeurethance. There are horror stories regarding thermoplastic, though I've put 25K miles on mine without a problem. www.tccoa.com sells the entire front end polyeurethane kit, but it costs $250 - a lot if you just want to do the strut bushings. www.summitracing.com sells rubber replacements, which would last 100k miles.
I really have no idea who sells poly bushings for the strut rods only.
I was just meaning that, if they were the wrong lengths, you could "modify" them, like you had to, before the install so that there wouldn't be the trial and error type things.
I just did a complete front suspension rebuild(minus air struts)on a members 96 LSC and he purchased most of his parts from RockAuto, along with the strut rod kits. I too installed them without looking at the sleeves, and remembered vaguely of someone saying they were wrong. I removed one side about half way through installing the new bushings and double checked the sleeve size. They were the right length, so maybe its been fixed. Who knows, I'm only one confirmed person. I have new set sitting on my shelf, but I don't know the length of the original sleeves to compare to or I'd have 2 confirmed corrected kits, haha.
This doesn't change the fact that they are "Folyurethane" bushings.(fake poly)