Shaking Pulling Steering Wheel How to Diagnose a Seized Brake Caliper

That's weird. What's that? Oh man, that's starting to shake. What's going on? Man, the shaking is getting worse the longer I drive. I better have someone take a look at this. Oh, there's Len. I'll talk to him. Hey, Len?

What's up, dude?

Hey, I got like a shaking in my steering wheel. I've been driving around for a while and my steering wheel started to shake. I was wondering if maybe you could take a look at it.

Yeah. Yeah. I could take a look at it for you. Kind of in the middle of this right here, but I'll take a look at it for you when I'm done with this.

All right.

If you wanna just pull it aside or something.

I'll just park it over and, you know, come get me when you're ready or something

Sure. I'm just gonna keep bonking under this hood.

All right.

I'll get to it.

All right. Cool.

Okay. So I just got the truck inside the studio and I kind of wanted to go over some of the symptoms that I felt while I was on my road test. Obviously, if somebody brings a car to me and they want me to check it out, I'm gonna road test it. I need to see exactly what's going on.

What I found when I was driving this is, of course, well, it's a pretty nice truck. I'll just state that right off the bat. Aside from that, is I didn't necessarily feel the shake that he was talking about when he asked me to check out his truck. I started driving it around a little bit and I started to wonder maybe this guy's just kind of losing his mind. Going 40, steering feels smooth. I don't know what this guy's talking about. But what I did notice is after I drove it for a short period of time, I did have to break a little bit. So things started to heat up. But overall, the faster that I started to drive, I started noticing that there was a little bit of a shake coming from the steering wheel. I'm driving for a little while here, starting to get a little bit of a shake in the steering wheel. Let's try accelerating.

Jeez, on throw. I can barely hold onto this thing. Better slow down. I didn't necessarily feel it coming through the entire truck, but I did notice once I started to accelerate a little bit more once the vibration started, it actually started to get a little bit more violent in the steering wheel. That essentially tells me that something's hanging up in the front and I needed to check it out. And something else that I noticed is as soon as I pulled into the driveway, I went ahead and I jumped out of the truck. I wanted to check the temperature of my front brace because like I said, I felt as though the shake was coming from the front. I ran over to the passenger's side over there, I checked the temperature.

Okay. 150. It was a little bit high, but it wasn't really too bad considering the amount of time that I was driving it. I quickly ran around to the driver's side because I wanted to try to check them at approximately the same time. Check this thing. Ooh, 196, 186. Oh boy, it depends on where I go on this rotor. I noticed that the driver's side was quite a bit hotter than the passenger's side. That tells me that something's going on with the brakes, but we need to get into it and diagnose it. Obviously, having contaminated fluid could potentially cause some issue with your braking system. If you know that you haven't serviced the brake fluid in approximately a couple of years, generally, it's a good idea to go ahead and replace it. When you do it, you wanna flush the entire system in case there's any type of debris or contamination in the system. And you're also gonna wanna make sure that you use the proper fluid for your particular application. If you use the wrong fluid, there's a possibility you could cause more brake damage as well. You also wanna make sure when you open up your fluid, you don't have anything sitting on top of the bottle like this one right here. It looks like somebody went ahead and stuck their finger in there to open this up, it pushed in some of the debris. If that made its way into the system, there you go. Another issue.

Another symptom that I noticed was that I had a little pull when I was driving. I noticed that it kept trying to pull me to the left. Just feels like there's a constant pull to the left on this thing while I'm driving. It's like I just constantly have to hold it to the right. This thing's all over the place if I let go of it. Jeez, the longer I drive, the worse it gets. Unbelievable. Now, generally, you can go ahead and say that that means that there's either an issue with the left or even the right. It really depends on how you think. But for me personally, it is just a symptom to think about. It doesn't necessarily mean one way or the other. You're not really gonna know what's going on until you dig into it a little deeper. Now, we've got this up off the ground, I want to go ahead and try to spin the wheels. That one spins good. Okay. Oh, jeez. Wow.

The next thing that I'm gonna do is check the front end. I wanna make sure everything's nice and tight. If anything's loose and this has play, there's gonna be an issue where this can wander around and you might even feel a shake driving down the road. Okay. I get nothing from the ball joint down there. Oh, yeah. Tight. Little side to side, check those tire rods. This feels good. And then, of course, you do the same to the other side of the vehicle. Let's get the wheel off of here. Let's try this.

Wow. So we can tell that we have a restriction on this side right here because, of course, the brake's hanging up. We need to figure out exactly what's going on. The next thing that I wanna check is my flex hose. That's this rubber hose that leads from the brake lines all the way down to the brake caliper. Just take a quick look at it. You wanna make sure that it's not broken, damaged, or swollen in any way. Go ahead and take off this cover right here so you can see everywhere along the way and just make sure that it doesn't look like it's restricted. Common areas where you're probably gonna find an issue with your flex hose, you might have swelling along one of the couplers or even along one of these brackets right here. If the brackets are rotted, it could potentially be squeezing in on this flex hose, which is gonna restrict the fluid making its way down to the actual caliper, but also it's gonna restrict the fluid from making its way from the caliper back up the lines when you release the brake pedal.

Another way to help tell if our flex hose is good is to come right over to the caliper, we wanna find the bleeder screw. Generally, they're gonna have a cover on it, just go ahead and pop that off. We're gonna make sure we have a collection bucket, hand, and eye protection, and we'll just open this up. Now, at this point, we wanna watch for a steady trickle of fluid. I have some air coming out of this, which isn't good either, but I do have the steady trickle of fluid, which essentially means gravity's doing its job. It's drawing fluid down from the master cylinder through the lines down through this flex hose to the caliper itself. If I open this up and I didn't see fluid coming out like this, that would tell me that I have a restriction someplace in my lines up above the caliper. Let's go ahead and close that for a second. Now, the next thing that I wanna do is restrict flow coming from this flex hose right here. So I'm just gonna put a little bit of pressure with these hose line crimpers right here.

Now, at this point, we'll go ahead and open this up, and we shouldn't see very much fluid coming out of this. You might see a slight trickle, but that's pretty much it. After that, the next thing that we wanna do is try to push back this caliper right here. While I get in here and I try pushing it back, that's gonna push in the pistons. If for some reason I try pushing this and the pistons don't make their way in, well, that means we have an issue with the caliper. How can we tell that that's the case? Well, of course, there won't be any fluid that comes out of this. You might see a little trickle come out, but you actually need to see quite a bit come out as we push in those pistons. I'm just gonna carefully get in here. Okay.

Wow. Okay. So, I didn't get any movement from that caliper. The next thing that we're gonna do, is go ahead and close our bleeder screw. We'll remove these pliers right up here, and then we're gonna start removing the slider pins. Now, the slider pins on this particular application are a little bit different than on most passenger vehicles. For these right here, once I try turning this area right there, it's actually gonna spin the entire pin that comes through the bracket. On other vehicles, there's gonna be a slider that sits inside here, and then there'll be a little bolt that screws into it. I'm just gonna go ahead and break these free.

Woo. Okay. So now you would wanna go ahead and remove the slider pin. This area right along here is the area that's gonna go inside of the bracket. If it looks like it's dry or rotted in any way, it's gonna cause restriction, and that'll make it so the caliper can't function the way that it should. This one looks great. We'll get the other one out of here as well. That looks good as well. Now we're just gonna try to get this off of here. Oh, man. Okay. I got the caliper off of there finally. I'm gonna hang this up here. And the next thing that I wanna pay attention to really quick is the brake pads themselves. Now, the brake pads are supposed to be sitting inside the bracket and that's what's gonna keep everything the way that it needs to be. What can happen is, is the brake pads can get stuck on these brackets. They're actually supposed to be able to flow back and forth, just like this. Nice and free. If for some reason, you go ahead and try to grab onto it, and they just don't wanna move, I mean, these work good so I don't have to worry about it. But if they were stuck on there and you couldn't move it like what you feel like you're supposed to, well, that's gonna cause brake drag and, of course, that could potentially cause this issue. These ones feel good. I can get them right out of here.

Let's get this off of here. Grab the pads. And the next thing we're gonna do is inspect these. What we want to pay attention to is, of course, the condition of the braking material itself. If it looks like this one right here where it's severely mirrored, well, that's something that you're gonna wanna take care of. That doesn't necessarily mean that there's an issue with the brakes themselves, but, of course, it is something that you wanna pay attention to. With the caliper off of there, this flow is easy-peasy. That tells me that I don't have an issue with the bearing. There isn't anything else holding this up. Pretty much all that's left that we haven't checked is the caliper itself. Now, let's go ahead and hop over to the bench. We're gonna have a look at a caliper that isn't in very good condition. Now, to do this, I'm gonna try to be as safe as possible. As I try to put a little bit of air into this causing pressure, this piston's gonna wanna force its way out. Of course, I'm gonna wanna have something here to protect it from shooting out all over the place. I'm just gonna put this right in there. You can also use a block of wood and, of course, don't put your fingers in between. Perfect. Sorry, dude.

Man: That's fine.

Len: Okay. So this isn't working. As you can tell, I'm trying to apply a little bit of pressure inside this. That little bit of pressure, like I said before, should be pushing this piston out. The piston hasn't even moved a centimeter yet. That tells me that there's some sort of restriction going on inside this caliper. So if there's a restriction inside the caliper, essentially what that might mean is you go ahead and release that brake pedal, but the caliper piston itself, isn't releasing the brake pads from the rotor. When the brake pads don't release from the rotor, especially for an extended period of time while you're driving down the road, everything's gonna start to overheat. And while things start to overheat, they start to expand a little bit. While they're expanding, it's gonna cause increased pressure on that one brake, and that's gonna cause the shake that we felt in the steering wheel.
Okay. So we're gonna go with the assumption that this caliper's bad. Like I said, I think that it's actually getting seized up inside this area, but I can't get it apart to show you and I really want to. So, I found another caliper on my buddy's truck, and I took it off there without telling him. So, what I'm gonna do now is just try to push this out and then maybe I'll try to put it back together other than later without him knowing. As you can see, it came right out the way that it should, just like I said that it would. And now I'm just gonna go ahead and push this out the rest of the way. You wanna be very careful there could possibly be brake fluid inside this still.

Okay. So, now that that came apart, you can see exactly what I was talking about. This is the area right here that I showed you that had rust on it on the other caliper, but, of course, it didn't necessarily go in so far that it actually damaged the caliper piston itself. But if the rot did actually get into this point and it was causing restriction on the inside of the caliper right along here, well, that's gonna make it so the caliper piston's frozen. Now, right inside the caliper bore here, this area right along here should be nice and smooth, so this area of the piston can glide right across it. Also, you're gonna notice that there's a couple of seals inside of here. Since I've got his caliper all blown apart, I might as well just continue tearing it apart. I'm gonna get this dust seal out of the way.

All right. Now that we have that out of there, we wanna just take a quick inspection of it. If it looks like it's swollen in any way, there's a possibility that the fluid that's inside the braking system could be contaminated. When that happens, this could actually get swollen like I said, and then it might bind up the piston on the inside of the caliper. Essentially, the Piston's trying to make its way out and this thing right here is just kind of rolling over and it's causing restriction making it so the piston can't work the way that it should. Okay. So real quick, this is our original caliper right here. We tried forcing out the piston so we could see exactly what's going on. The piston itself did not wanna move inside the caliper bore right here. I wanted to take it apart so you could see what was going on, I couldn't. So I went out to my buddy's truck, I took off his caliper, I'm gonna have to replace it for him at this point because it's completely ruined. We went ahead and we took it apart. Right along here, you can see the inside of the caliper itself. This is the bore. And you wanna make sure that that's nice and smooth like I said before. Inside this lip right here, you're supposed to have this little flat gasket right there.

Essentially, like I said, if this was swollen due to contaminated fluid, it could potentially make it so the piston itself is getting bound up inside of the caliper itself. Other than that, if the piston was rotted all along this area here or even inside the caliper bore itself, it's gonna cause restriction once again. Essentially, what this comes down to is an issue with restriction inside of the caliper causing the caliper piston to be able to go out a little bit, of course, with the pressure coming from brakes. But when you release that brake pedal, it's not necessarily able to retract the way that it should. Well, I don't really feel like buying a caliper, let's see if I can get this thing back together for him. I don't know. Maybe he doesn't need that one. Let's try it without it. He won't know. Perfect.

So, now maybe you're wondering, do I need to buy a complete new caliper to go ahead and try to fix this? Or maybe I can just get one of those rebuild kits? Essentially, those are gonna come with some gaskets and if you're lucky, maybe you can get one with a piston if you pay a little extra. For me personally, if the piston's stuck inside the caliper, how are you gonna get it out of there? Maybe you could try to grip on it and try to yank it out of there with some specialty tools, but overall, more than likely the calipers pretty much past the point of no return. Overall, the best-case scenario, if the piston's stuck inside the caliper, would be to just go ahead and get yourself a brand new caliper. But if your caliper only has an issue where maybe it's just seeping a little bit, the rebuild kit. Sure. That makes sense. But for this particular issue, you have to replace the caliper.
Okay, friends, so that was a lot of information. I just kind of wanna break this down for you real quick. Now, we worked on multiple vehicles for this. The original vehicle that I worked on that had the issue with the caliper is gone, but I had the caliper so I can show you exactly what's going on. This one right here really isn't in bad condition at all, it was kind of just movie magic. What I want to get to though, is the point. The point of this is if you find that you're having an issue with one of your calipers, typically, it's okay to just go ahead and replace the one caliper. You don't necessarily need to replace those as a pair. But it is always a good idea to make sure that you double-check both sides of the vehicle. You don't wanna only go to one side because you know that this is the side with the issue, you wanna double-check to make sure that the other side's good to go as well. But you're gonna be over there anyways, because even though you replace the caliper, I would also recommend replacing the front brakes and the pads as well, especially if you had the issue with the caliper or it was hanging up and it was causing a lot of heat and friction. The heat and friction is gonna, of course, cause a brake pulsation and it doesn't make sense to just go ahead and replace the caliper and then deal with that brake pulsation while you're driving down the road.

Okay, friends, so I hope you like the video. I hope you learned a little something. If you did and you wanna talk about it, leave it in the comment section below because I always love to hear from you. If you saw something that you thought was interesting that might help somebody else down the road, go ahead and share it with them, that would mean everything to me. While you're at it, go ahead and subscribe, ring the bell that way there you and all of your friends can be kept up with all of our latest content. What? No. I can't even say my outro right.