rear passanger brake running hot

[tboyadjian]

Hi,

I recently did a brake job on my 2000 Cirrus (replaced wheel cylinder, pads, hardware kit, and drums turned), and sometimes the rear passanger brake is running hot (very inconsistently - it will do it one day and not the next). I opened it up twice and inspected - everything has been assembled correctly and the adjusters are greased and move nicely. It worked very well for a while, and then I smelled it and noticed it was running hot. The feel of the brakes is very good: pedal is right up and there is no significant braking bias (in either the fronts or the rears) when you hit the brakes hard. Any idea's?

Some interesting things that I did notice:
- when I did the brake job, the rear pass wheel cylinder had been leaking, so it was really gummy inside. This is one reason I had the drums turned. I measured the drums and they are in spec.
- it was significantly harder to bleed the rear pass then any of the other wheels, including the rear driver side.

Help me out if you can. Thanks.

[lord Kelvin]

I've seen obstructed hoses cause brakes to be very slow to release...if at all. When you brake, hydraulic pressure (generated by the brake pedal) will force the fluid past the obstruction. However, when you release the pressure, the pressure remains in the wheel cylinder or very slowly goes away.

In the two cases I saw this problem, it was due to rust growing on the inside of a support bracket that wraps around the rubber hose. I looked up your hose on RockAuto and the pic shows it has a bracket that wraps around the hose.

NOTE: In one case, I temporarily fixed it by "spreading" the support bracket a bit. It's pretty heavy-duty metal so I used a wrench on a large screwdriver to spread the metal a bit. If you can spread it enough, you can sand off the rust, and squeeze it back to support the hose.

Add'l info:
You will likely not see the rust described above until after you spread the bracket.

[OldCarDude]

Lord Kelvin:

Just wanted to take a minute to drop a few dozen thank-yous for the above response. I had been fighting this problem on my 2000 Cirrus for months and was about to give up. I had smoked three sets of brake parts on the driver side and still could not figure it out. The problem and solution were both exactly as you described, and totally invisible to the eye.

Guess that's what this site is all about!