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Brakes dragging

bob888

Well Known Member
I replaced brake pads and now dragging both sides. Not rubbing a little. DRAGGING. I pushed caliper pistons all the way down before reassembling calipers. Suggestions?
 
Did you use correct thickness of pads ?

Did you break them in ?
Slow taxi down the length of the RW with slightly pressure on the brakes.
This will wear off the high points that are most likely causing the drag
 
The only thing I can think of is that you got the wrong pads. Verify the numbers are correct. Were the pads loose at first until you pumped the brakes? When I replace pads and compress the piston in the caliper the brakes take one or two "pumps" until the pedal comes up solid.

-Marc
 
Maybe pull the pads and pump to make sure the piston didn't become slightly sideways causing them to stick. Another consideration is if you've never rebuilt the calipers you might want to. It's a single oring on the piston(s).
 
Anthonee Is spot on….

You didn’t mention what brand brakes you have.

I went through a similar ordeal several years about and it quite a while to find the root cause.

If the brakes are dragging, they are generating heat. When parts get overheated, they will warp. Warp parts will cause more dragging.

I had Matco brakes. Besides eating through pads quickly, the rotor and the stainless bushings warped. I went through swapping out parts multiple times until I found the root cause. In my case there were two root causes.

George Happ shared that he’s found that in RV’s many of the cylinders aren’t installed so the cylinder moves perpendicular to the floor. These will have side loading on the cylinder and will prematurely wear out an oring inside the cylinder. This will cause the cylinder not to fully release the hydraulic pressure. A sign that the oring failed is that you will see fluid sitting on top the cylinder.

The fix is pretty easy. Use a square to ensure that the cylinder moves perfectly up and down when extended. This is caused by the rudder pedal frame not being perfectly square. I had to add a couple washers to fix the problem. I had just one of the four cylinders that had this issue.

Once you’ve found if you have the cylinder issue, you can get a cylinder rebuild kit from Matco or Spruce. They are inexpensive and takes about five minutes. Many RVs have Matco cylinders even if they have other vendor’s brakes. I also adding return springs

My other root cause was more difficult to find. With Matco there is a factory installed fitting that slides over the stainless bushings. It had about 1/32” of play. I never noticed it in all the months of troubleshooting. A friend was curious and asked why was one moving and the other wasn’t. The loose fitting caused binding and the parts overheated. George validated that the fitting wasn’t supposed to move at all and sent me a new part under warranty even though I was technically out of the warranty period. The new part solved my last issue.

I am happy to report that it’s been over two years and my pads are still within spec and working just fine. Your issues may be different, but I wanted to share my issues. Sometimes the root cause just isn’t obvious and can be hard to find.
 
Thanks for the input. I ended making a shim of .02 aluminum between the caliper halves. Seems to work…done on advice of A&P friend.
 
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