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HELP, doing brakes on friends forester, are both pins supposed to slide?


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work the pin out with a hammer, torch, or pliers - turning turning turning...etc etc...then starting pulling and banging it - it'll usually come out.

 

clean it up really well.

 

use Silglyde or it'll happen again.  i've had the regular permatex and other typical brake greases seize again shortly afterwards.  Silglyde is much better.  probably an artifact of the abrasive winter road treatments we see in the east/midwest.

 

if it has the slide pin busings like that era OB does - remove them and throw them away.  They routinely swell and seize in the caliper bore.

actually they often swell after being properly regreased - probably different compounds in the caliper grease reacting to the rubber.

they aren't needed, solve nothing, and cause no issues being throw away so i've been doing that for years as "preventative maintenance", i severely dislike having a point of failure that is not necessary at all. 

Edited by grossgary
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Thanks everyone, We were able to get the pins out, soaked them in gasoline to take a layer of rust off, cleaned em up, took the rubber bushing off, re-installed and the brakes are now good as new!! 

 

Im thinking the stuck pins were the contributor to this:

 

oeQAh3u.jpg

Edited by MDW
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Yea, I have had same slide problem with stuck slide pins. So, like yours, the pin froze, so pad wore out early, then metal on metal gouged into the rotor. If rotor is not gouged too bad, in the past, I have just installed new pads and drove on.

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what the crack smoker?  the inner part of the rotor separated from the outer?  i've never seen that before or it's an optical illusion?  that's crazy...i keep relooking at that photo.

 

i throw the bushings away - they're pointless and cause failures/issues.  they're not needed.

 

you can drive with grooved/torn up rotors all day long - causes no issues at all and mechanically they should perform better - more surface area = larger effective rotor surface = more heat dissipation. you now have performance rotors people buy on ebay.  your pads will just last 45,000 miles instead of 49,000 miles. 

 

in the rust belt the pins will seize and just wear the pads out early again anyway so who cares?!  LOL

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any indication if that's a replacement or Subaru rotor?   i've seen countless seized calipers, some had to be torched apart, not reusable, and rotors grooved and calipers that disintegrated the pads such that they just felll out in pieces and nothing was left....and never a rotor separation like that.

Edited by grossgary
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Yep, that would cause that. That's just metal fatigue from the caliper applying pressure to only the one side of the rotor on a constant basis.

 

Year ago I saw a set of solid rotors that the pads had worn out on. The person kept driving anyway. Pads wore all the way down to metal on metal, still driving. Metal worn down and the piston popped out of the caliper and got hung up cocked sideways against the rotor, still kept driving. Finally the rotor wore through in the center and broke away from the hub. They rode around for another couple months until the front pads had worn out, and they finally brought it in because the brakes were making "a little noise".

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while on the subject of brakes,

how loose or tight should the pads be in the calipers?

i know too tight will make it harder to stop,

but what about too loose?

 

i did my brakes on my 98 obw, 160k, A/T, last fall.

i don't drive it much , waiting on a teen to turn 16.

i drove it the other day and the front pads are dragging.

when i test it by driving in a tight left hand circle the dragging noise almost stopped.

when i straighten back up it returned.

loose sloppy pads,

or what?

 

i have had pads drag due to caliper slide pins,

and i have swapped out pads and rotors for years with little or no problems.

i have never wondered about pads being too loose.

but this i find a bit unusual.

 

i guess i should try a right hand circle as well.

and start driving it every day.

thanks.

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Generally if theyre too loose they bounce around and make a clicking/rattling sound over some bumps. The pads will always drag against the rotor a little bit no matter what you do. But just the pads own weight resting against the rotor will not cause it to wear any noticable amount.

 

You're probably just hearing the pads scraping away at some surface rust on the rotor. It only takes a few days of humid weather for the rotors to rust on the braking surface.

Edited by Fairtax4me
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