wes8398 Posted October 5, 2015 Report Share Posted October 5, 2015 (edited) Disclaimer: I've owned a number of cars and always done all the brake, suspension, and other basic maintenance myself. So I have some experience, although I'm far from a "mechanic". I changed over my wife's '11 Sport's wheels to the winters the other day, and took the chance to check out the brakes while I was at it. I noticed a couple rotors weren't wearing all that nicely - the contact surfaces didn't seem to be having clean contact with the pads, or maybe the caliper wasn't squeezing the pads tight enough. So I removed the pads, used a wire brush and brake clean to clean everything up, re-lubricated with proper caliper lubricant, and swapped the inside/outside pads on each corner. While cleaning things up, I noticed that a few of the pads didn't move freely in their respective retaining clips. I bent the clips open as much as I could so that they'd still fit in the bracket, but even then, the pads seemed to bind a bit where they should have been freely moving. I also noticed that most of the clips had broken tabs that held them onto the bracket. Unfortunately, I didn't have the parts in hand nor the time to get them to put new clips in, so I reinstalled everything as it was after cleaning and re-lubricating. A couple of the pads still weren't moving as freely as I would like though, which leads me to my question... Can I just do away with these clips, which would afford more room for the pads to move around freely? Or do I replace the clips with new ones and just take a grinder to the pad fingers (?) to remove a little material to allow for them to move more freely? For the record, the pads and rotors are all about a year and a half old. Rotors are straight (no warping), and pads have PLENTY of life left in them. They were done by a Ford Stealership as a condition of purchase when we bought the car (used) at the time. Edited October 5, 2015 by wes8398 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
macbwt Posted October 5, 2015 Report Share Posted October 5, 2015 I would not remove the slider clips. They are designed to help the pads move more freely. The real issue is the rust that builds up under them that causes the binding. IF they were removed this would allow the pad tabs to fuse together with the caliper bracket and then no move at all. The best bet is to either sand blast the bracket or perform light grinding on them to clean up the rust then apply some brake lube on the exposed metal and the clips also. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wes8398 Posted October 5, 2015 Author Report Share Posted October 5, 2015 macbwt - Part of the cleaning up that I did was using emery cloth and brake clean to get those sliders spotless. The pads still didn't move freely in them though. What I'll probably wind up doing is taking my Dremel or a grinder to the pad backing plates where they contact these sliders. I'll take some material off to allow them to move more freely. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WWWPerfA_ZN0W Posted October 5, 2015 Report Share Posted October 5, 2015 (edited) These videos may help: Edited October 5, 2015 by WWWPerfA_ZN0W Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WWWPerfA_ZN0W Posted October 5, 2015 Report Share Posted October 5, 2015 And another one: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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