Hello:

I have a 84 F-150 2WD. The truck pulls to the right and the front right brake/wheel heats up. The caliper on that side has been replaced, but still the same problem.
What are some other possibilities causing this to happen. Alignment is ok also.

Thanks in advance for any help...

 

Hey billm,

Similair thing happens to my '93. I'm not sure but it probably is due to the twin i-beam setup. My truck has pulled from side to side on ocassion under heavy braking. It's not constant, however, and pulls both to the right and left, depending on the lean of the road I am on. Does yours always pull to one side? These older Fords are known for having a lot of drift in the steering and the same thing may also affect braking. Just a guess. Let us know if you figure it out. BTW, you should post in the pre-1997 forum as there are a lot of helpful folks there. There's a guy called "Pastmaster" who owns several pre-97's and seems to know quite a bit about them. Good luck.

 

Lift your front axle and determine whether both the front wheels have a similar amount of drag.

Some drag is normal, desireable, and designed in.

Wheel (or more correctly disk rotor) lateral runout is supposed to knock back the disk pads to a minimal amount of drag.

When brake pads are relined, the piston is pushed back into the caliper. Unfortunately, sometimes a build up of 'gunk' just immediately behind the o-ring prevents the o-ring from properly squeegeeing back -- and can result in an o-ring 'wind-up' or hysteresis which wants to push too much on the pad.

Worse yet, the piston can be pushed back over the 'gunk' and then when it gets pressurized, it rolls over the gunk again and just doesn't move as freely as the one on the other side (the rebuilt caliper) that has a different amount of built-in resistance at the o-ring.

So -- first determine if the drag isn't the same. Actually, it's hard to tell which side will be causing the 'pull', since the warm side can actually be the weakest side at first (not talking about 'fade').

I'm assuming that the finish on both rotors is identical -- which causes problems of its own.

Biggest thing about disk brake pull is to have the brakes at the same temperature when you apply the brakes -- and brake drag is the biggie.

Make sure that your front wheel bearings are properly adjusted -- a too-tight bearing will not allow the caliper to release enough.

Make a couple hard brake applications. If the third one is nice and straight and with no pull, you've probably got a brake drag situation that can be cleared up (since by the end of the second hard stop, both brakes are likely to be at the same relatively high temperature -- and balanced pretty well).

If the above test works to the positive, then you've got a low-temp imbalance, which can be allowing one side to stay 'damp' while the other side is warm and dry.

The rest of brake pull is largely fixed with smoke and mirrors -- but you've got enough to start the investigation.