More brake questions, and warped wheel?

The pins can appear to be seized if you move them with the caliper off the car. Put the caliper back on without the pads, then try to move it on its sliders. It ought to move very easily with one hand.

Possibly the piston is sticking in its bore. This is unrelated to the sliders.

Remove the caliper for its mount bracket. Have a helper step on the brake pedal and watch the piston. Do both sides move an equal amount, and do the pistons retract slightly when the pedal is raised back up?

Wheel is bent! You must feel a vibration at speed!

There is a special high temp brake grease you can buy that is used to lube up the slider pins. Generic or grease for any other purpose will not work for long. They sell small pots of it at the parts stores.

You have a dead tire by the sounds of your description. Check with the tire maker because most have a road hazard warranty that covers the broken belt so you will at least get a wear rated discount on the new tire needed.

You were taught the correct way to tighten the tire on.

I sure wouldn't 'lightly' sand and brush the rusty hub, I would put some elbow grease into it. Even a wire wheel on a drill works well.

Mike

Well sounds like you have some wheel issues. First, an angle grinder is very cheap these days. Go to Harbor Freight.com and you will usually find 41/2 Inch ones on sale there for 10 to 15 bucks. Then buy a wire wheel for it, about 5 bucks. This is a cheap grinder so don't get too rough with it, but I have several, and they last for years. You can take a lot of rust off fast with one of these. As far as the wheels distance to the strut goes, there are many different wheels with what they call different "offset distance." Offset distance is the distance between the place where the wheel hub touches the bolt face of the rotor, and the center of the actual rim width. Wheels, even from the same car manufacturer, change the offset distance frequently. Thats why some wheels from some years of a car won't quite fit and shouldn't be used on other years of the same make and model. Also tire widths are different as well, and change from manufacturer to manufacturer. Seems all the tire maker engineers didn't go to the same school, and tire sizes are not the same, even though the size printed on the tire may say it is the same. Thats why you should always mount tires in pairs on the same axle, from the same manufacturer. When a new wheel is made, it has a standard for how much "runout" it can have. This is how much a wheel rim wobbles when it is turned on a car. In the real world, as cars hit bumps and curbs or are stressed by a crazy driver, the runout can increase over time. If you hit a big pothole, it can bend the wheel, whether it is steel or aluminum. When the runout gets bad enough, you feel it in the car, or in the steering wheel. When you are rolling along slow, about 10 MPH, on a smooth flat road if you can find one in America today, do you feel like the car is going up and down a bit on one side or corner? Maybe it seems to wobble a bit side to side? This can be caused by runout, or worse by a wheel that is actually bent inwards. When this gets so it bothers you or you can feel it at speed it should be replaced. However, there is one more problem here as well. The tires themselves have a certain amount of runout, and also have belt seams where the rubber is glued together during assembly. They also get some flat spotting or have what is known as memory. It is kind of like if you lay on a couch or chair for too long and your arm or leg gets stiff. When a car sits for even a few hours, the rubber takes a "set", and you have to drive around for awhile and heat up the tire to make it smooth out again. This used to be bad when cars had nylon tires, as nylon sets hard when it is warm and suddenly allowed to cool off completely. Newer tire compounds don't do this as bad, but they still do it some, especially in cold weather. So before you get ready to throw out a tire, run it for awhile, warm it up, and then check it for runout. Belts do break in tires sometimes, usually evidenced by differences in handling properties of the car in left and right turns, or funny pulling to one side during braking. I had a Chevy Van that was heavy for car tires and it used to break belts all the time. I finally had to switch to a light truck tire to get tires to last. Also the air pressure should be the same in both tires on the same axle. Some car and trucks are supposed to have different air pressure in front and rear tires. Check on the car drivers door post for a sticker that tells what this is supposed to be. Most of the time the tire pressures listed on the door are kind of low and result in poor gas economy but give a smooth ride. You can go higher up to the limit of the tire, usually 35 pounds, but the ride gets stiffer as well. With the price of gas these days, mine stay at 35. If you are a corner racer, a lower pressure will work better and sometimes is necessary for the proper car balance to be achieved for best handling, due to different front and back weight balance of a car. You can experiment to find what is best for you. As far as floating calipers go it depends on what car you have. Some like GM have rubber bushings that rub on the mounting bolts. The calipers slide kind of hard, and get harder as the bolts rust. Bolts with good plating don't rust. You can get new ones too. Some floating calipers have rubber dirt seals that keep the sliding surfaces clean. They slide quite easily, like on some Mazda and Honda brakes. However, the seals rot off, and then the grease washes out, and the calipers freeze up. You can buy rebuilt calipers with new seals, or get seals at a dealer. Ford brakes were historically the worst and a lot of them froze up when they were assembled at the factory. It was a very poor design. They did get better with the newer designs. Tightening the wheel bolts, just snug them, lower the car, and tighten every other bolt around the rim for 5 lug wheels. For 6 lugs you tighten the first bolt, and the one across from it, then move one bolt over and do it again till all are tight. For 4 lug, do the first, the one across, then the other two. You should always use penetrating oil on the lugs. I saw an engineering demonstration where they measured clamping force with and without penetrating oil. The bolts would only clamp half as much pressure if you didn't use oil, with the same amount of tightening torque applied with a torquewrench! After the bolt is tight, the penetrating oil evaporates out, and the bolt is properly tight and clamps the metal together at the required tightness. It was amazing. I hear people say, "Don't ever oil lug nuts, because they will fall off." The truth is, use penetrating oil, and they will never fall off. Good luck.

What do you mean by "penetrating oil" exactly? WD40 / CRC 5.56 ? Also I bought some Loctite wheel-nut glue but haven't used it yet.

Don't matter, just 'don't' use oil unless you have the 'wet' torque specs. They will be specific about the 'wet' part too.

Otherwise do them dry with the 'given' dry torque settings.

Use the wrong settings and you will either stretch lugs, maybe causing them to fracture so a bump makes the wheel fall off and/or never get the suckers off again or the other way around they will be too loose and fall off....

Mike