I just did a pad slap on my 93 loyale and now the wheels won't budge, its like the brakes are stuck on. Well they will move if I drive it but they grind real bad like they shouldn't. The calipers slid on nicely so the pads aren't too thick...Could my caliper pistons be stuck in or something? Seems like they are both grinding.

 

The wife helped me bleed them and the pedal seems real tight, ebake cable in the cabin is loose, when not engaged. Ebrake cables at the cailper don't seem too tight.

 

Any thoughts? Re-bleed? Kinda stumped here.

 

Dean

Theres apparently (Im just hearing this now because my right brake caliper is stuck) a way that the caliper piston has to be turned or it wont work right.

Hmmm, well I turned them clockwise and pushed them in simultaneously to fit them over the new pads and I have done them this way before on my GL without issues. These pistons slid back really nicely, especially compared to working on the GL.

 

I didn't grease the pistons, perhaps I need to?

 

As this is my first experience with a hill holder system, could that be the culprit? Note that it seemed to work great prior to the pad slap.

Did you service the slide pins? Clean and regrease?

No I didn't. They slid back and forth really smoothly though. I will give it a shot - any special grease that I should use?

release the spring on your hill holder and see if it helps.spray it down with some brake clean and actuate it back and forth to get it lose.i have disabled several of these on the older rigs and never gone back.....cheers, b

If the pedal feels tight when he brakes are stuck, then something is holding the caliper against the pads.

 

The hill holder is a good possibility.

 

But Im still banking on slide pins, or some kind of binding in the caliper. Probably the caliper piston not quite lined up with the pad. If the pads are not installed correctly, the pad will not sit straight, and will allow the caliper to bind, and not release.

 

The slides will seem fine when apart, but one or two pushes on the pedal and the calipers will bind.

 

So, when it is stuck, can you wiggle the caliper at all? How difficult is it to open the caliper to get the pads out again?

Nope, none of the above. This one would have been a long shot to guess this one without seeing. I rebuilt/regreased one of the calipers, and then turned the rotor around without issue. Next I put on the rim and spun it again and it kind of hung up, so next I tightened the rim and then it wouldn't budge! The proverbial light bulb illuminates...the reason it's binding is because I have the black 'Wagon Wheel' rims below installed. The old pads were worn enough to allow the outside of the caliper enough clearance for the rim 'spokes'. But the new pads (Bendix D311IQ) were too thick and thusly pushing the calipers outwards on the silde pin enough to hang up on/rub the rim. These Bendix pads are the correct pads for a 93 Loyale BUT they are roughly 2-4mm too thick to use with my black rims. Since I don't care about the rotors I shamefully loaded the outside pads into the vice, put on my eye wear and ground them down about 5mm which was enough to give me clearance. Bled them all the way around with fresh fluid and it's rolling smooth again, brakes work great.

 

So that leaves me with a couple of questions...

 

Since grinding down pads is not the smartest thing to do, does anyone know if there are any lower profile pads around that would do the trick? I thought about making an adapter plate for the hub maybe, but I don't want to sacrifice any structural integrity....?

 

Oddly the white rims I show here below fit my 88GL without any rubbing whatsoever, yet the black ones on the 93 Loyale rub the rims really bad. Were the 88GL calipers smaller than the 93 Loyales? If not then I must have obtained smaller pads for the 88.

"Since grinding down pads is not the smartest thing to do"

 

Just wanted to say I loved that sentence lol.

 

I have to swap out the calipers on my 87 GL that I bought...a week ago.

That thing is in need of quite a bit of work, thinking calipers is a good place to start considering the noise is getting unbearable.

 

Glad you were able to figure out what was hanging up your wheel. Isn't it a gratifying feeling when you curse and curse and curse and get really angry and then finally, finally you're under the car just looking around like WTF and it hits you.

OH!!!!!!! lol. Thinking we've all been there. =P

Ha ha, yeah next up are the center caps I just bought off of a member here that I will blindly try to force onto the rims. I am quite sure that they are not going to co-operate either and I only have one set of plastic retainer rings so far. It's unsubstantiated...but I heard you might be able to get the plastic rings from the dealer.

 

I always try to make a good excuse for buying new tools and if the caps don't fit, the center caps project just might award me enough 'persuasion tokens' to satisfy the wife when I tell her I 'need' to buy a welder.

I had to sand the paint off the outside edges of the tabs to make the pads fit with the clips. I have held glazed pads against the side of a rotating chop saw blade in the past to resurface them. Works great.