Hi,

Looks like a great forum. I love my '95 Civic. I replaced the front brake pads tonight, took it for a test drive and the driver side wheel was smoking and very hot when I returned!

Also, while I still had the front of the car in the air. I put the car in drive and watched the passenger side wheel spin. It would stop when the brakes were applied. The driver's side wheel wasn't spinning, but I watched the outer pad closely, and it went in and out as the brakes were applied and released.

The driver's side is the side that was smoking.

Thanks for any replys!

 

your drive axle is on the right side so that is why you should see your wheel spinning, if you dont have a lsd then the passanger side wont move unless on the floor, i believe.

Ill wait for other h-techers to verify that, anyways you might have got some grease on the rotors when doing the job so that might have caused the smoke, you should drive it around and see if it smokes again, also I am not sure if you used grease on the pads on not, but that should t cause a smoking issue. Sometimes brakes get hot and they smoke, how much smoke is a different question.

 

Shouldnt be smoking under normal driving. Make sure your calipers arent binding. Might need some grease on the slide pins.

 

I jacked it up again and put it in drive.

It is very hard to turn the driver's side wheel.

Because I can see the outer pad moving in and out when the brakes are applied, I'm beginning to believe that the inside pad is hung up. The slide pins might be the problem. Is there anything I can do to address this?

Thanks for any replys!


Modified by bill casey at 9:09 PM 9/17/2008

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by alphalanos &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Shouldnt be smoking under normal driving. Make sure your calipers arent binding. Might need some grease on the slide pins.</TD></TR></TABLE>

apply grease on slide pins and hope it works

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Historyg &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">

apply grease on slide pins and hope it works </TD></TR></TABLE>

lol ^^^

I wonder if the resin in the brake pad has been cooked since it got to smoke. I don't think the brakes will be the same again.

 

Yeah the passanger side should be the only one spinning. Properly bedding in your brakes requires you to get them hot enough to start smoking. Did you do this? If under normal driving cond. they shouldnt smoke but alot of pads have a breakin surface that may cause the smoking. You should put the car in neutral when you jack it up and try to spin by hand.

 

I just got back in from another round of taking the wheel off, taking the calliper apart, reassembling everything.

This time, I smoothed the surfaces of the clips.
And decided that the caliper piston is definitely NOT seized.

However I did notice a difference between the two calipers. The side that is working can be opened and closed by hand, in other words the two sections of the caliper slide back and forth on the "pins" with the rubber boots on them.
The drivers side (that doesn't work) wont allow me to do this.

 

you might need a new caliper? is it leaking,pull the pistonboot out a little bit and check to see if brake fluid is leaking?

 

isnt that normal with break in???

 

what kind of pads are you using? i'm pretty sure normal break-in for pads isn't smoke.

also check your rubber brake line on the side that is smoking, make sure the line isn't kinked

 

dissasemble the calipers and grease the slide pins and contact areas of the pads to caliper. Check the caliper cyl. is not sticking.