4x4 Related Groups > Tech Talk

brake problem

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sys_eng:
This morning I left the hotel that I was staying at & had to drive about 10 or 15 miles to get to my next meeting, just before my turn off my XJ seemed to start pulling a bit to the left, I never thought much about it thought it was just the road or the wind . When I went to turn off the freeway it tried to veer to the right, I only had a couple of blocks to go so I continued, at my destination I stopped & saw smoke rising up from the drivers side front tire. I had a good look under the Jeep & saw that there was something wrong with the brake & that the rotor had heated enough that it had "blued", the rim was too hot to touch. After the smoke cleared and every thing cooled down I jacked up the front end & pulled the wheel off. I found that the primary problem was that a small stone had some how wedged itself between the brake pad & caliper forcing the top of the pad into contact with the rotor. I put the tire back on & left things to cool for a bit longer. Later on I went back out & tore every thing apart to check for damage & make sure I could drive the next 150 miles to get home. What I found was that the rotor fins and the grooves in the pads were filled with the remnants of mud from my last wheeling trip. The combination of the small amount of friction and the lack of cooling caused my primary problem.
MUD = BAD

I picked up new brake pads and rotors that I'll install this weekend. With the rotor getting that hot I just don't want to take any chances.

Question :
could the hub/bearing assy be damaged now? I was planning on changing them out "just because" I don't really know how many miles are on them (XJ has 355000 km or ~220K miles) should I just go ahead & change them now or will it be ok to wait a bit yet (a month or 2)????

RedYJ:
Did that make a realy cool sound?  To check your bearings just jack up the jeep and with the tire still tightened down try to push and pull on the tire if it moves freely like it seems that the tire is not tighened and clunks you need need bearings... mud ate up my bearings too so yours probably need to be done too.

cLAY:
Yep I bet your bearing is toast, had the same thing happen to me 2 winters ago. Bearing went and the only thing holding the wheel on was the brake caliper. So the rotor was leaning heavily on the pads which quickly wore out and cooked the rotor. I had to replace atleast one unit bearing a year.

But I don't have to worry about that anymore! Found the ultimate fix for it! D44!  :D

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