[WNYcarguy]

Good morning everyone-

I cleaned up the hubs, lubed the pins, and replaced the hardware, rotors and pads on the rear of my 2012 LT last night.

Took the car for a test drive and immediately noticed that the car was dragging and wouldn’t even creep forward with my foot off the brake. There seems to be little to no play between the calipers and rear pads upon inspection. I disassembled everything this morning, screwed the calipers in and pressed on the brakes and the pistons both came out. Screwing them back takes some effort but not terribly so.

Does this sound like a caliper issue? Or is this part of the normal break in for rear brakes? I have done this a half dozen times before with no similar issue in my memory.

Thanks in advance!

 

[DrivenDaily]

What method did you use to retract the caliper pistons? They're also used for the parking brake so they may just need to be taken apart, the piston retracted, and then put back together.

 

[WNYcarguy]

Thank you for the reply, DrivenDaily - I used a pair of needle nose pliers to gently twisty the pistons back into the caliper (righty-tighty). I've never had this problem before. Is there something I should check to see if it's the ebrake? I did notice it takes a lot of effort to engage the ebrake after the job was done...

 

[TheSilverOne]

sounds like rust jacking. Prior to assembly, did you remove any and all rust on the caliper brackets where the hardware is mounted?

 

[WNYcarguy]

Yes, I sure did. I even used a file to remove some of the corrosion as the surfaces were pretty bad. Hardware fit snuggly but not too tight into the slots, and I used purple Permatex on the hardware and pins...

sounds like rust jacking. Prior to assembly, did you remove any and all rust on the caliper brackets where the hardware is mounted?

 

[repairman54]

Since you did screw the pistons back in I would say the pistons themselves are sticking in calipers.
Looks like it's time for some reman. calipers.

 

[balkey]

I had an issue with my rear brakes a while back (around 100k miles). I use the e-brake a lot when parking on inclines, and my issue was the rear calipers just seized up and was not fully releasing when i disengaged the e-brake.
2nd set of calipers has been fine for about 50k miles so far.

 

[gearhead4]

sounds like rust jacking. Prior to assembly, did you remove any and all rust on the caliper brackets where the hardware is mounted?

I had a rough time fitting the new pads ears into the ss clips. When I did, I found the brake pads dragging badly. The wear clips seemed to be interfering with the caliper assembly.
What worked: I removes the wear alarm clips, sanded the edges of the pad ears and used a flat blade screwdriver to scrape the rust off the caliper surfaces where the clips mount. The trial and error method took me 4 hours for one wheel. The other wheel will have to wait until I have another 3 or 4 hours to devote to it.
Next time, I will remove the caliper bracket and descale it with a wire wheel, and grind bevels on the pad backing ears.
Apparently, getting the pads to slide easily into place is key to preventing dragging pads. This should seem obvious, but I have replaced brake pads dozens of times and never had this problem until today.

 

[TheSilverOne]

Good feedback. I assume with tighter tolerances combined with rust build up, this happens.