Brakes galore!

[Lord Tauk]

Well, the only problem that I had with my truck is that after my brakes would get warmed up, they would squeel annoying enough to hear from inside another vehicle everytime I came to a stop.

I went to NAPA today and got myself some semi-metallic pads, upon trying to install the new pads I ran into a hellacious problem, the pads themself were about .015-.020 thousandth of an inch to long to fit into the tabs of the calipers. I don't think I've ever spent so long just doing a break job. I sounded like a sailor, I couldn't do nothing to get them to fit in square. Talk about quality control.

I didn't have a working grinder, but I did manage to file down the material enough for it to fit snuggly.

After cleaning everything off, greasing the caliper pins, and some disc break quiet the squeel from the front is gone, but I have really slight squeel from the rear that I can live with. There was no grease or anything on the pads I took off, I am to assume that the pads I took off (still with a lot of meat left) were the reason why I got such a bad squeel, and no grease.

On a side note, the 4 pads I replaced had these two connecting 'pins' that are about 1/8 in diameter, shaped to fit into the caliper that fit into holes in the pads themselves. I didn't reuse them as I was having a tough time enough getting the pads themselves installed. Anyone know how important these are? I couldn't figure out if they even do anything?

 

[fordtrucker4life!]

sounding how hard it was to get the new pads in are you sure they are the right pads along with your old ones?

 

[Lord Tauk]

Im absolutely positive they were the correct pads. At first I thought I might've been sold the wrong pads, but comparison to the ones I took off, they were practically identicle to everything, and I looked at them long and hard for a good while contemplating on going back and mentioning something. I didn't remove that much material for them to fit.

If they weren't the correct pads, what else could they have been for? Im sure FORD doesn't use that many variations of disc breaks sizes on all their trucks. Everyone makes mistakes, but I doubt someone at NAPA got that bad of a mixup?

There is still a possibility they aren't the right ones, I kinda doubt this now, but they worked. I've goten pads for other applications from NAPA before, and I've never had this much of a hassle. No big deal, just one of those days that everything went wrong it seems.

 

[JLDickmon]

umm... it's a moot point now, but, what you should have done, was take off the shim/clips from the caliper bridge, and then sand or lightly file clean the groove the pads ride in.. then replace the hardware with new and reassemble...

 

[Lord Tauk]

umm... it's a moot point now, but, what you should have done, was take off the shim/clips from the caliper bridge, and then sand or lightly file clean the groove the pads ride in.. then replace the hardware with new and reassemble...

Indeed, I thought about that and multiple other options of what I can do. I figured I'd just remove a little material off the ends of the pads themselves, that or throw the ones that still had plenty of pad left, save the work for another day.

 

[WD40]

Are the new pads free to move like they need to now and are the brakes working like they should now? I don't know about the pins you are talking about.

 

[Lord Tauk]

New pads are working like they should.

They're not really pins, they were like two bent piece of 1/8'' OD wire/pad that went into two slightly drilled holes on the side of the pad that connected them together in the caliper, for what? I dunno. Perhaps some way for Ford garages to tell if the pads had been replaced or tampered with? Im sure most people discard them.

If you got any spare pads laying around, take a look for the two holes on the side. I don't have the ones I took off to take a picture of.

 

[trackspeeder]

New pads are working like they should.

They're not really pins, they were like two bent piece of 1/8'' OD wire/pad that went into two slightly drilled holes on the side of the pad that connected them together in the caliper, for what? I dunno. Perhaps some way for Ford garages to tell if the pads had been replaced or tampered with? Im sure most people discard them.

If you got any spare pads laying around, take a look for the two holes on the side. I don't have the ones I took off to take a picture of.

Must be the springs that holds the pads away from the from the rotor.

 

[Fire1]

Yep those wires are there for a reason, to hold the pads off the rotor when NOT braking. Save wear and heat. I'd put them on ASAP!

 

[Lord Tauk]

Yeah, I had to get a IAC vacuum hose for something else at the local Ford dealership and inquired to what those wires were for. I'll get them back on.