Cars - For Car Enthusiasts

3980 readers

78 users here now

About Community

c/Cars is the largest automotive enthusiast community on Lemmy and the fediverse. We're your central hub for vehicle-related discussion, industry news, reviews, projects, DIY guides, advice, stories, and more.

Rules

Stay respectful to the community, hold civil discussions, even when others hold opinions that may differ from yours.

This is not an NSFW community, and any such content will not be tolerated.

Policy, not politics! Policy discussions revolve around the concept; political discussions revolve around the individual, party, association, etc. We only allow POLICY discussions and political discussions should go to c/politics.

Must be related to cars, anything that does not have connection to cars will be considered spam/irrelevant and is subject to removal.

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

BallShapedMan

RightHandOfIkaros

Brakes feel weird after new front calipers installed? (self.cars)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by carthrowaway to c/cars

15 comments fedilink hide all child comments

A few months ago, I bought a 2015 Subaru Outback and the front left caliper was acting up, so I had a mechanic check it out. The mechanic recommended replacing the two front calipers (they were pretty rusty), the front-left brake hose, and then just greasing the rear caliper pistons.

I'm no longer hearing any weird noises now from the front-left and the brakes feel much smoother, but there's a couple differences that are throwing me off. The distance the brake pedal needs to be depressed before the brakes start to bite feels a lot longer now. I've also noticed a kind of hysteresis, where if I apply the brakes twice within a second or two, the second time I apply them, they'll start biting earlier.

Should I get the brake fluid replaced / bled? Could air in the brake lines explain this behaviour? (I assumed air in brakes line would had to have been bled but it's not explicitly listed on the bill I got.) Any other explanations?

The mechanic did paint the calipers too, just to delay rust, and there was a bit of overspray on the rotors, but I'm sure it got instantly scraped off by the brake pad.

Any advice would be appreciated!

Edit: To clarify, I did not get the pads replaced. The inspection done when I bought the car showed about 50% life left on the pads.

Follow up: You folks were right - They bled the brakes and the car felt like 90% better. They said the master brake cylinder might have been leaking a bit so they offered to replace it with no labor charge, so I sprang for that too, but it's hard to tell if that made any difference. Either way, it feels back to normal now, so thanks for your advice!

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Sounds like air in the lines, if they didn't fill the caliper before attaching the hose it can sometimes be more difficult to bleed all the air out.

Cold brakes don't bite as hard for most types of brake pads so that tracks as normal to me. I'm guessing you got new pads, so if they haven't done the bed-in procedure, doing that might help with brake pedal response also.

[–] carthrowaway 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thanks for the advice. I actually didn't get the brake pads replaced, so they don't need to be bedded in. Would you take it back to the same mechanic? (Any idea what it'll cost me?)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I would take it back, but I have no idea on cost, I don't use mechanics.