For the past month and a half my front driver brake of my 05 FX4 Supercrew has been dragging a little here and there. I know its the front driver brake because when I park I can smell it and feel the heat coming off of it. Towards the beginning of February I took it in to the dealer have my oil changed and tires rotated and asked them to check the driver brake. They didn't find anything wrong, which didn't surprise me since this was kind of a flaky every once in a while problem.

So this brake problem continues off and on and I'm in yesterday for service again at the dealer. It happened to be one of the bad days for my brake, so when I pull up I get a tech to come look at it. They call me back and tell me the Caliper is sticking, and has toasted my rotor and pad. They want $470 + tax for new caliper, (1) new rotor, new front pads, and turning the passenger rotor, and bleeding the brakes.

I have a "Complete care" secondary warranty, which specifically says that it will not cover the rotor and pad portion of the work. Anyone have any idea how much of this $470 is caliper work?

Any idea WHY the caliper was sticking in the first place?

 

Oh yeah, there was soo much heat that the lug nut cover was pretty much melted to the lugs, and they bent it trying to get it off. So I guess I get a new one of those too.

 

i had that happen on my 97 and it scared the hell out of me.front driver side locked up on me. the pins need to be regreased and the flex hose might have an internal problem.i regreased my pins and gave the system a complete flush and it hasnt happened since.worse case you need a new flex hose 470 $ seems steep. this is a known problem the dealer should have known about.

 

Here's the final tally

New drivers side Caliper, new driver side rotar, turn the passanger side rotar, new pads on both front wheels, replace the brake fluid that was burnt by the heat caused by the stuck caliper....$670

My warranty only covered the caliper and labor to install it ($148)

So it ended up costing me $520 ish.

 

that is a complete rip off. you would have better off buying the parts and doing the work yourself.its rare that caliper goes bad like that. usually its a problem with the flex hose.

 

There is a way to test the flex hose. I had to do this many years ago but if I remember, you jack the front up and put the truck on jack stands, turn the truck on and have a friend push the break pedal and see if the caliper instantly releases when your friend releases the pedal. If not then there is a problem w/ the hose. But like I said, this was a while ago so I could be remembering this wrong.