Yesterday morning, when I backed out of the carport and drove to the end of the driveway (about 100'), the front left brake grabbed when I stopped at the gate, and my wheel locked momentarily. Then when I got to the stop sign at the end of the street, I heard a loud thunk thunk on that side when I applied the brakes. After that, it braked just fine with no more grabbing or noises. Any ideas on what could be happening? The brake lines are 6 months old, and there's fluid in the reservoir. Thanks.
Sounds like the caliper was binding, how old are they? You could get away with greasing the sliders and hope it was just some debris that caused it to bind, but if they are old it's pretty cheap to just change both out. What could happen is that dude could bind and not realese, that could cause overheating of the disc and warping, not to mention making it hard to keep moving.
Pull the front wheel and look at the brake caliper and slider bolts. You could have a broken or missing slider bolt that allowed the caliper to rotate out of position when you backed up, the caliper grabbed when you stopped the next time (your noise) and as long as you were moving forward the caliper was happy. Next time you back up it could move out of place again and may not go back without damaging other parts.
Checking out my new Jeep purchase, I noticed a broken slider bolt on driver and passenger side calipers. I think they are pretty weak, bought an upgrade kit from Autozone and the bolts and sliders look way healthier (sliders were thinner wall to hold thicker bolt)
Thanks guys. I do not know how old the calipers are, I've had the Jeep 4 years and the brakes have not had to be replaced yet. Are the sliders something that's obvious? I asked them to check my brakes a couple of months ago when I bought new tires. I'll take it back to the shop and have them check the calipers, I'm too old to take the wheel off myself with just a lug wrench.
Most of the time when you ask a shop to check brakes they only look at how much is left on the pads. Finding a worn caliper is not so obvious, and its a pretty normal problem on these old jeeps to need new calipers. If you know someone who can swap them out its very easy and inexpensive, shops seem to charge an arm and a leg for something that doesn't take much more than an hour to do.
Unfortunately I have to rely on shops to do a lot of things, but there is one close by that specializes in Jeeps (Jeep Performance Inc., a WF sponsor) and they are reasonable as well as honest. I could probably replace the calipers myself but I don't think I have the physical strength to get the wheels off. I will try though before I take it in.
Also, you need to check the caliper bracket on the spindle. I have found many a jeep that have had little grooves warn into the bracket that the caliper rides on. The brake pads rest on this piece and vibration causes a little wear that makes a slight groove. When you push the brakes sometimes the pad catches the groove and hangs up, then a lil pop and everything is fine. You can polish it smooth, or worse case you will need to weld and resurface the slide. There is a post on here somewhere that someone did an the subject.
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