Front Brake Help

[Dreif]

The Right side bakes on my 1998 Ram pulls every time I get on the brakes. I had the caliper replace and new fluid and it still pulls HELP PS. The steering wheel turns, I can make a right turn with my hands off the wheel

 

[Joe G.]

Believe it or not, this may be caused by your REAR brakes. The so-called self adjusters are almost worthless. It's best to do a manual adjustment for the rear every so often. I do it every oil change.



You may need to clean and lube the pins that guide the calipers. You can do this without removing the caliper if you do them one at a time. Just remove the pin, clean and polish it. I use emery cloth. Then lube it with silecone grease or SilGlide from NAPA.

 

[Extreme1]

From what I've seen on these trucks there are 2 kinds of brake pull.



1) The steering wheel will twist: The calipars aren't doing the job equally. Assuming the pads and rotors are OK, you can try cleaning and lubricating the slide pins with a silicone based grease. If that doesn't fix it, you might have gotten a bad caliper or the other one might need to be replaced. That is why a lot of shops replace everything when a vehicle comes in for a brake job.



2) The wheel stays mostly straight but the truck still goes to one side. This is from the rear brakes not being adjust right or from having oil on a drum from a bad axle seal. If it is a small adjustment, you might get luck enough to fix it by backing up and slamming on the brakes a few times. Remember to pull ahead between adjustements to get the adjusters to do their thing.



Hope this helps. Good luck.

 

[dseabaugh]

brake pull

Had same experience with my '97. Had me all pi#$ed of for 30,000 miles. there is a tsb for the trucks that no cure can be found to change the geometry of the front end. It uses shims to space out the wheel on the opposite side from where it turns too, but you need to go over everything else first. Supposedly there was some shotty machining and welding leaving a bunch of poor guys with trucks out of specs. After several warranty tries I blew my stack and decided to tear into mine myself. I found the caliper was fitting too tight in it's saddle. I filed it down so that when it rusted that it would still slide and cured the problem. one side the saddle had a taper so it would wedge tighter as the pads wore down. The second time I had the problem it was a wheel bearing starting to go bad. hope this helps.

 

[dseabaugh]

brake nuisance

I forgot to tell you. be sure and file the caliper, not the saddle as it is easier to replace. I got mad at one caliper and took the side grinder (tired of filing and the idea I had to fix it myself as the warranty mechanics couldn't figure it out) to it and it put the braking load on the a allen head bolts instead of the saddle as I got the gap to wide. It only needs a few thousandths (15 maybe if its square?)of an inch.

 

[LSMITH]

I fought the same pull on my 99. The dealer got 5 tries at fixing it under warranty and could not fix it. They tried the spacers and that made it better but not fixed, I found 9MM total of spacers in it . I finally took the time to look at it and fixed it myself. Here is what fixed mine:



Take the calipers off. Remove any spacers and mark them for what side they were on. Polish the pins with fine sandpaper, 800 grade or higher. Set them aside.

Take a large fine cut file and clean up the caliper slide surfaces on top and bottom, the machining on them is horrible. Just knock the high spots down and clean the surface up, when you get over 50% or a little better of the surface clean and flat you have done enough. Make sure to hold the file flat against the surface the whole time you are cutting, you need to keep this surface flat and in the same plane it was originally cut in.

Now take the file and do the same thing on the knuckle, keep the file flat and take your time. When you have 50% or so cleaned up you have done enough.

Now clean all of the parts up, and be sure to clean out the pin holes in the caliper. Lube all of the slide surfaces and the pins. Lube the pin holes in the calipers. Use only a grease specifically for brakes!!!! I found a lifetime supply of "synthetic formula brake and caliper grease" at the local store for about $8. Be careful to not get any of the grease on the pads or rotors.

Reassemble and test drive. I think you will find that if there is any pull at all it is a whole heck of a lot less than you started with.

My truck was cured and I have zero spacers in it. If you still have some pull you can experiment with the spacers to try to get the last little bit out of it.

You should also check over your brake hoses carefully. The dealer replaced mine and told me that they have seen lots of them that have delaminated or collapsed making the caliper retract slowly heating it up, hot brakes will grab more than cool brakes.



Hope this helps.

 

[ageorge]

Be sure to check the caliper on the other side -- if it is not pushing out properly, the one you already replaced will do all the work and pull the truck to that side.

 

['956Wheel]

been there!

Swap the pads, left to right, if it does not change anything check the rears, adjust as needed, this is real easy and will give you a definate answer whats doing the pulling. I had a B/O rotor due to the previous owner letting it go metal to metal... bugared it, below min. thickness. Rotors for mine were over two bucks each!!



Mike

 

[FFL8N]

I know that you don't want to hear this, but... .

They don't have a fix..... !!!!! They will try all kinds of stuff... Sometimes they get lucky. I had a 98 1/2 and now Dodge owns it again... (unless they resold it to some unlucky person). I went through the arbitration process and they lost. I had it in the shop 8 times for the same thing... they tried the shim. . they adjusted the brakes... replaced the calipers... ect... . it would work for about 1500 miles and start doing it again. Now I own a 2000 with the dual piston calipers... you can't compair the brakes on the two trucks. . good luck!!