Hi, I've got a couple of cars with this squeek situ - driving along I have a squeek that gets faster with speed but goes when the brakes are applied. Both cars are higher miles (150k & 180k) and i've replaced the discs and pads on both and greased the slide pins. What else can i do before I strip the caliper off and send for a refurb. Cheers, Matt Edit - i did the brakes on one of them and a professional did them on the other one!
It sounds as though you have a sticky caliper. It's not retracting as much as it should. You could do the usual, take the pads out, out a piece of wood between the pistons and push them in and out a few times to see if they free up. Alternatively take them out altogether and check for a pitted or rusty surface. However, I had similar on my Porsche and it ended up being a dragging rear handbrake shoe even though the noise sounded as though it came from the front. New calipers may be a better deal than a refurb and then sell the old ones.
I agree,when I was working on mk2's on a regular basis I found many with sticking front caliper pistons,the above solution always worked for me,usually I would also vacuum out old brake fluid @ the same time. Sometimes when the disks have too much runout the above method won't work,the actual clearance of the pads is only a small amount so with too much runout you will get squeaking no matter what.
I always put a smear of grease on the rear of the backing plate, it often stops a squeal. Sometimes, certain pads just are squeaky, no matter what you do. A good blow out, followed by a hard braking session often sorts them out, for a while.
Thanks. I have brembo pads with eicher discs on one of the and the other is pentax with unknown discs (i didn't do that job) How do you vacuum out the fluid - is that a fluid change with an easy bleeder? I have a sealey bleeder I can use. I'll try the above first and hopefully can save them for a while.
Sorted on one of my cars - the CV boot had torn a while back and i had replaced but I found the caliper had gunk where the pads slide on the carrier so were getting stuck. I cleaned it all up with the wire brush. I also pushed the piston out as far as i dare and slipped the boot back - clean under there but gave it wipe down and sprayed some silicon spray for good measure. Annoying squeek gone!
