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Hot Nut, Axle Nut that is (an odd situation)


keish
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94 Loyale

 

Just finished changing front right axle, front brake pads, and put snow tires on. It's after mid-night and I took a 20 minute cruise to see how she felt, test the brakes, drive through some snow at night etc....

 

Everything seemed fine while driving, but for some odd reason I reached down and touched the newly installed axle nut and that thing was pretty f'n hot. I checked the other axle nuts and they were warm but the new was would burn my hand if I left it there for 10 seconds. The hub behind the nut was also hot. I find this odd and I'm not sure what it is a sign of. Any ideas????? I'm driving from New York to Alabama this weekend and this concerns me a bit.

 

Could over torquing that nut cause a problem? (the torque wrench in our shop was busted so I winged it, I know not the greatest idea)

 

I need to get an alignment done for the snowtires. Could the alignment being off somehow be causing this to happen?

 

Could it be something to do with the new brake pads? Why only one side....

 

It's past one A.M. and I have to work early so I'm going to sleep. My brain is a bit fried and I'm not sure what to think of this situation. Throw some ideas my way, I won't be able to do anything about till after work, maybe it will be something obvious when I look at it tomorrow. Right now though I'm quite puzzled, a bit worried, and hoping someone out there has some idea of what might be my problem.............Thanks....

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Unless you had 10' of leverage on there, you probably didn't overtorque the axle nut.

 

 

 

Sounds like one of 2 things is causing the extra friction. the bearing, or the brakes.

 

How was the grease in the bearings when you had it all apart?

 

 

Did you crank the piston in enough to get the pads on there? the caliper should slide easily over the new pads. How was the condition of the slide pins?

 

How did the old pads look? any signs that one side was wearing more than the other? (like that side is dragging all the time....)

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Unless you had 10' of leverage on there, you probably didn't overtorque the axle nut.

 

 

 

Sounds like one of 2 things is causing the extra friction. the bearing, or the brakes.

 

How was the grease in the bearings when you had it all apart?

 

 

Did you crank the piston in enough to get the pads on there? the caliper should slide easily over the new pads. How was the condition of the slide pins?

 

How did the old pads look? any signs that one side was wearing more than the other? (like that side is dragging all the time....)

 

this is the exact thing that happened to me. pulled the caliper back off and cranked it back in and reinstalled still works great.

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Yeah it sounds like dragging brake to me. You need to push the caliper in so the pads slide on to the rotor loose. You also need to make sure the slide pins are clean and free of rust and debris, etc. If the slide pins are nasty the brakes can't slide back off the rotor and will drag / produce a tremendous amount of friction / heat.

 

If all the brake stuff was done properly and is in good condition it sounds like dry/failing wheel bearing.

 

Hope you get it figured out before your trip. Good luck!

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It can also be just a bad caliper. If enough moisture gets into the brake system over time, it'll start to rust the inside bores of the calipers (and master cylinder and brakes lines) causing the piston to stick while braking and not retract like it should. It'll be like having the brake lightly applied and eventually burn up the pads and rotor or worse, catch fire:eek:

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before i did my brakes, I had a stare down with my caliper, fire extinguisher in hand, ready to kill it, man it was smoking like crazy and hot as hell. I didnt dare touch it. It was sticy caliper pins. i took it off and greased the pins with brake parts grease and it had no more problems, except it warped the dog snot outta that rotor!!!:lol:

 

p.s. you would probobly smell it if it were brakes, stinks like high hell

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before i did my brakes, I had a stare down with my caliper, fire extinguisher in hand, ready to kill it, man it was smoking like crazy and hot as hell. I didnt dare touch it. It was sticy caliper pins. i took it off and greased the pins with brake parts grease and it had no more problems, except it warped the dog snot outta that rotor!!!:lol:

 

p.s. you would probobly smell it if it were brakes, stinks like high hell

 

Believe it or not, thats not always the case. I've seen calipers barely starting to stick and all it really did was warp the rotor over time and caused the vehicle to pull to the side of the dragging caliper when the brakes were NOT applied.

 

It was on a '98 Ford F-150 which are one of the common caliper sticking culprits.

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Ive ran across the same heat issues and in one case bleeding the brakes took care of it. I dont think it takes much pad contact to generate heat. Seems like if your caliper was really dragging it would pull to that side.

Good luck getting it fixed before your road trip

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I've had calipers rust inside and cause them not to retract... It was a back brake on my Legacy, but a caliper is a caliper. All I did was pump it all the way out, disconnect the brake line, and squeeze the piston back in again. This obviously squirted all the brake fluid out, and an ALARMING amount of rust!! The rust wouldn't go out the bleeder screw, but holy hell did it come out of the piston. Very very nasty. I did this a few times until it was clear, put it back together, bled it. And I've never had an issue with that since.

 

The moral of that to me at least, was that I needed to take better care of my braking system so such things don't happen again.

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This is why I recommend replacing the brake fluid once every other year unless you live in a very humid enviroment, then do it once a year.

 

This includes removing the old fluid from the calipers too, not just sucking the master cylinder dry and putting new fluid in it.

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Sooo....Caliper wasn't retracting properly, heated up enough to seperate the pad from its backing.....I replaced the caliper today and discovered the ball joint is in need of some love......Supposed to be leaving for a 1,000+ mile drive tomorrow..........hmmmmm.....to chance or not to chance.......To drive old Subbie with a bust ball joint or the 97 Jetta that started screaming my CV joint is F'D about a week ago???

 

also next time i replace pads I will make sure to remove all fluid from the caliper and do a better overall job of cleaning it.

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