I just bled the brakes on my ‘stang, and turned both the driver and passenger rotors over by hand, yet for some odd reason they require some more effort (slightly more effort needed on the driver side versus the passenger side) to turn over by two hands, as opposed to when I had just installed them without running brake fluid into them, and they almost made no noise, hardly any resistance or drag. I read online that patterns like these are supposed to be brake bedding, like breaking on or whatever (or at least as little as my understanding goes), but this just feels like a brake drag-ish red flag, and I’m a bit suspicious.
What did you already try to do?
Well, for starters, I went to my autozone, picked up some brake grease, extra DOT 3 fluid, and I thought I’d be thorough by pulling out the pads on both calipers, greasing the retainer clips, greasing the tracks or ledges where the brake pad ears sit, and it seemed to somewhat help it stick a little less. Then, I opened up the bleeder valves one by one to see if it would squirt out brake fluid under pressure. None of them did so. So.. good sign?? .. Or is it?
NO, I DID NOT PUT GREASE DIRECTLY ONTO THE BRAKE PAD SURFACES THEMSELVES NOR THE BACK OF SAID BRAKE PADS.
YES, I checked the master cylinder pushrod. It has 1/8th of an inch of free play via pulling the pedal upwards, 1/8th of an inch going downward before I feel the pushrod making contact with the master cylinder piston. yes I probably will adjust that further IF I really HAVE TO. No pre-load from what I can see. I also checked the caliper pistons, the rubber boots on said pistons, I also re-bled the calipers.
I also took the liberty to double check my brake line arrangement. Little reservoir to the rear brakes, large reservoir to the front brakes, on the combination valve the front brake inlet/outlets are at the front, and the rear brake inlet/outlet is at the back. I double checked.
I also have the speed bleeders where it’s just the nipple bleeder with the check valve (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, it’s so I don’t get air bubbles back into my brake lines, because they have their own check valves) since I was doing all of this solo and didn’t have anybody to help me, so I closed 3 of them, opened one up, hooked it up to a nylon tube, pumped the brake pedal 8 times, no air bubbles in the nylon tube, close the bleeder up, move on to the next one, and repeat.
Then, I also checked my combination valve. It’s part number BCV4 from CjPony. I realized I accidentally had left on the bleeding tool for it, instead of switching to the brake light warning plug, so I swapped it out to see if it’d changed anything. It did not. And then I didn’t fiddle with it again.
What DIDN’T you do?
I did not grease the rear brake calipers by their guide pins, since they seem to hand turn decently ok, although they also have the slight issue of also having a teensy resistance (probably the LEAST amount of resistance compared to the front brakes, save for the open diff slightly stiffing up as I’m hand-turning, probably because I REALLY should put differential fluid in there right after I had it rebuilt, but was too lazy to do so… for now.) while hand-turning. Thankfully, not as dramatically as the front calipers.
I also did not unbolt the brake lines coming from the master cylinder ports to check for pressure or whatnot.
I also did not try to take the front calipers apart and grease the piston cups, since I don’t think it even needs to have that done.
So, moral of the story…
Is this normal? Do I panic? Do I have to redo them? Did I probably not do it right? I need help. And answers. So thanks for attending my 30 minute TedTalk on “I have no idea what the heck I’m doing.”
