brakes smoke under normal to medium braking

[pwnzer]

As the title states the my front brakes smoke under normal to medium braking. I assume the pistons are seized. Not quite sure what caused this... anyways, rebuild or new calipers?

 

[____Kurt____]

Does the braking seem different other than the smoke (ex. pulling to one side, brake peddle fading, anything it didn't do prior)?

 

[spooling hard]

Pull off the wheels and take the caliper off and look for any leaking fluid, brake fluid or water. If you find brake fluid, I wuld recommend rebuilding the caliper as the boot inside may be bad

 

[6bolt4g63]

See how the pedal feels, if it slowly goes to the floor theres probably a leak. Find what wheel is smoking, get the car off the ground and spin that wheel, if its real hard to spin then caliper is most likely frozen.

 

[pwnzer]

The braking doesnt seem different. And it does not pull to one side. Both the left and right front rotors are smoking. I will spin both wheels this week when I do other maintenance. They must be getting damn hot as I have less than year old slotted rotors on there and ceramic pads with less than 10,000 miles on them.

 

[spooling hard]

Really? thats peculiar. you are POSITIVE it is the brakes and cant be tires rubbing or anything? And I would check the calipers ASAP. If one goes you can lose all fluid completely when you start to brake and you will not have brakes.

 

[pwnzer]

Really? thats peculiar. you are POSITIVE it is the brakes and cant be tires rubbing or anything? And I would check the calipers ASAP. If one goes you can lose all fluid completely when you start to brake and you will not have brakes.

I am positive it is the brakes. I can get out of the car after driving and watch them smoke for a couple minutes.

 

[Boostinsideways]

Are your cv boots okay? If they were ripped you could be slinging grease everywhere, including on your breaks.

 

[pwnzer]

Are your cv boots okay? If they were ripped you could be slinging grease everywhere, including on your breaks.

Didn't think of that. I will check that today when I go to work on the car.

 

[greekgodchaos]

I've ran into this problem on my dads Jeep, new brake pads resulted in heavy smoking under light braking in addition to excessive heat transfer to the rotors due to the added friction, needless to say they were warped but not enough to have them replaced, just resurfaced. Turned out that the brake fluid had *looked like* it had never been changed, I mean the resivuor (spelled wrong I know) was COATED in this brown film, anyways we flushed the whole system out, popped the new brakes in and no more smoking. We think that some of that gunk was keeping the brake fluid from returning to the resivor which basically prevented the brakes from relaxing their clamp on the rotor. So flush your system ( take your sweet time), resurface your rotors and make sure the pads are the right ones for your car! best of luck friend!

Alex

 

[jambro]

I ran into this problem and it turned out my back brakes were so bad it put all the work onto my front brakes but after the back ones were changed it didn't smoke at all

 

[jtmcinder]

The easiest way to check for a stuck front caliper without doing much work is to drive the car on the highway for ten minutes and then coast into a rest-stop, using the hand-brake to finally stop the car. The front rotors should be cool. If they aren't, the calipers are stuck.

ps. I loved the post about heat being transferred to the rotor; most people worry about the opposite: heat being transferred to the pads and beyond. But whatever floats your boat.

 

[pwnzer]

alright, so after taking a look, the calipers are not seized, but the pistons are definitely sticking. I am going to rebuild them this week. I also loved the post about heat transfer to the rotors, as a mechanical engineering student this is quite the interesting phenomenon and to clarify, my pads are relatively new, and the brake fluid is just fine.

 

[jtmcinder]

Any vibration in the steering wheel? In other words, any evidence that your rotors are warped? Did you change pad compounds without using sandpaper or ScotchBrite on the rotors? Either of these can make a non-stuck caliper heat up the rotors. Ain't so good for the ol' gas mileage, either.

 

[612 Performance]

Don't forget about brake hoses being an suspect, if the caliper pistons don't press in I would crack the bleeder open and check how the fluid flow is, if it isn't flowing well then the brake hose is to blame, and you could also have an issue with the master cylinder, not as likely but it seems odd that both of the fronts are sticking, if the master cylinder is to blame you can tell by checking your brake pedal to see if it can be pulled up slightly with your hand to check for slack.