Rear brakes rusted, be aware

[jrdnhsnbrg]

Evening gents, story time with jrdnhsnbrg.

Last Sunday I was driving to brunch with my girlfriend when I heard a funny noise coming from my right rear brakes. It sounded like a whooshing, or a plane going overhead. It would only happen under 25 and most of the time wouldn't go away until I was back above 25, whether I was on the brakes or not. Got home, took off the tire and lo and behold, the inside pad was worn to metal. The caliper bracket that allows both pads to contact the rotor evenly was rusted in place, meaning only the inside pad was doing all the work. The caliper also was not retracting, you have to use a specialized piston turning tool because the caliper pistons are threaded. After getting this far we decided it would just be best to replace both calipers, caliper brackets, and pads and rotors. The drivers side rotor didn't appear to even have been contacted by the pads as it had a fair amount of rust where it should be shiny, and the caliper bracket was once again rusted to the point where it wouldn't move.

Pictures:

Passenger rear pads, top is outside with about 50% material, middle is inside down to metal, bottom is new.



Rear drivers rotor



Rear passenger rotor



All new hardware

 

[miha]

look like your brake pads are bad quality. Ussaly I use motorcraft and didn`t saw same thing.

 

[jrdnhsnbrg]

look like your brake pads are bad quality. Ussaly I use motorcraft and didn`t saw same thing.

I feel like brake pads wouldn't cause parts to rust and others to fail, but anything is possible

 

[Svets96]

I'm gonna keep this in mind. My rears look ok for 77k, I do need front brakes.

Thanks.

 

[MooJohn]

I've got AutoZone's best rotors and pads (ceramic gold) on the front and they've been great for almost 2 years now. I'm not light on the throttle either. They smelled a little strong last week after a quick-ish stop from 90 but they did the job just fine and appear to have plenty of life left. At the price I wouldn't be opposed to replacing them every 2 years anyway.

If I ever find a cheap brake upgrade though, I'll be all over it. You can never have too much braking power!

Oh, and FWIW, if you plan to go faster than 100, manually shift out of overdrive first so the car won't short-shift into 4th gear. Your acceleration to 120 and above will be much, much quicker.

 

[jrdnhsnbrg]

I've got AutoZone's best rotors and pads (ceramic gold) on the front and they've been great for almost 2 years now. I'm not light on the throttle either. They smelled a little strong last week after a quick-ish stop from 90 but they did the job just fine and appear to have plenty of life left. At the price I wouldn't be opposed to replacing them every 2 years anyway.

If I ever find a cheap brake upgrade though, I'll be all over it. You can never have too much braking power!

Oh, and FWIW, if you plan to go faster than 100, manually shift out of overdrive first so the car won't short-shift into 4th gear. Your acceleration to 120 and above will be much, much quicker.

I'm trying to treat my car as nicely as I can, seeing as the transmission is having issues. Hoping to get that rebuilt this summer. I did get up to 115 once but I started running out of road.

 

[consigliere]

I just came across this message and lo and behold, my 1997 Continental is in the shop at this very moment having a rear brake job and rack and pinion replaced. I received a call a short while ago asking me to approve the replacement of the calipers as well because of frozen rusted pins and rust in general. That is no surprise. The car was driven in Boston for several years and there is some rusting of the under-body and other parts. The brake lines to the rear were replaced 2 years ago because of corrosion. Can't blame the pads or rotors.

My cousin's father-in-law owned the car previously, and I'm sure the road salt was never sprayed from the under body on a regular basis, if at all. I had the front calipers, brakes and rotors done 2 years ago. I'd do it myself but I do not have the facility to do it here in Florida where the car is now kept year round.

We love the car and have had it since 2008, but it is an American car and we've had to do work on it that we have never had to do on our 1996 Toyota Avalon and 2000 Toyota Sienna with similar mileage - namely suspension, rack and pinion, electrical, wheel bearing, a/c and more. In fact - this is funny - we now have to put the left turn signal on to use the windshield washer, and the intermittent wipers will only work in that position. The regular wipers work fine on slow or fast in any position. Again. we love the car anyway. It is fast, the engine with 130K burns no oil, the transmission seems fine (gotta change x-mission fluid regularly - it's a Ford product), has a great ride, and gas mileage is around 24+ on a trip with a/c, 17.5 local combo driving. One thing better - it's paid for and insurance is inexpensive. HAPPY LINCOLN DRIVING!

 

[Septimus]

I just got my car back from the shop to check out a 'whooshing' sound on medium deceleration along with slight steering wheel wobble. Turns out front rotors were warped and rear pads needed replacement. Gotta keep an eye on the little details.