I have had this car for about a year. The right rear caliper has been doing weird things since I bought it. I had the Ebrake disconnected for a while that helped, then I hooked it up again and put a lot of slack in the cable, was fine all winter. Now its really dragging a lot and getting HOT. Any way to free these up or should I just replace it, there not cheap.

 

Had that this week, It seems the pivot pin on the calipers bind up from lack of use. I sprayed them with LPS and tapped them with a hammer to the off position. This weekend my son and I are going to work on them doing the same thing to free them up.

 

You can try and turn the piston in clockwise, but you need a special tool or with luck can do it with a pair of needle nose pliers. I took my car to a dealership and 3 brake shops last week and all of them said just to get rebuilt calipers and my car has only 58K of mostly highway miles on it. I think part of the problem with the right rear caliper seizing was not using the parking brake. The parking brake, when used, causes the piston to pivot in further.

I ended up biting the bullet and buying new pads and two new rear calipers. I got a good price on the parts and talked a shop into installing them. They installed the parts, cleaned the brakes and bled them for a 1 hour labor charge and some brake fluid.

Good luck. You may end up buying rebuilt calipers. This is at least the 5th thread in the past few days I have seen on brake calipers, and haven't noticed any threads previously. Must be contagious.

 

What's a good price on a rear caliper ?

 

When I got home I pulled everything apart. Man, it was tight getting the caliper off the rotor. Things got a bit hot for sure. I cleaned and lubed everything. Turned in caliper piston a few times, was hard to do. Make sure plenty of Ebrake cable slack. Put all back together, first push on the brake caused way to much drag on the rotor, still gets hot. So my conclusion is piston comes out too far on auto adjustment or does not go back in once it gets out. So, I ordered a rebuilt for $55 from AZ, should have on Monday. Sound like the right thing to do?