HELP w/ my front brakes!!!

[vectorz]

was doing the front brakes for my 99 SLT this weekend, and there's something that has me very worrried. I've done disc brakes on all my vehicles, but the Durango is different. On all other vehicles I've done, there are two large BOLTS that generally hold the caliper to a large bracket, that are also held on with two bolts to the hub.

But on the Durango, there is no large bracket in the middle. There is only the brake caliper bolted directly onto the hub, by two SMALL bolts with a HEX key head! So that didn't worry me, I was actually very happy because to take off the rotors I didn't have to remove anything else. So i got the rotors turned @ Pep Boys, and than put everything back together. 2 HEX head bolts, voila. But the hex head bolts don't bolt all the way down. Their tread ends pretty early, and therefore, the caliper sort of is LOOSE against the rotor and hub! It looks tight, but since the two hex bolts have no more tread, they leave space that you can actually press against the caliper really hard and see it slide back and forth along the bolts. It creeps me out. So I put the wheels back on and everything is fine and dandy, however, I'm still worried that I did somethng wrong. Just having a caliper sort of loose and not fully tightened down doesn't seem right to me.

Anyone can provide input if this is normal? I'm used to having bolts on calipers that completely tighten down the calipers so that their isn't any slack or movement. I'm just concerned cause the wife uses the Durango to haul the kids around and I don't want to take any chances.

[yogi_123rd]

This is completely normal. It's called a dual sliding pin caliper design and I believe they came up with this design so the pads would wear evenly. The bolt down variety you are familar with tended to cause more wear to the inside pad.

The caliper basically just rests on the retaining pins. It can't fall off, and it shouldn't wobble. All it should do is slide on the pins. When you hit the brake pedal, the piston seats both pads with equal force. As the pads wear, the caliper will slide on the pins (centering the caliper) as well as extending the piston to maintain equal braking force on both pads.

When replacing the pads on this type system, it's a good idea to grease the pins (the worst case is that pads wear unevenly).