03 Montero Ltd. (not Sport).

Truck sits for a couple weeks at a time, though I try to drive it at least once a week. 3 and a half years old, it has 35k miles. The left rear brake is dragging to the point where if I drive it 3 miles and get out for an errand, it smells terrible. It clicks like it's cooling down, like an exhaust. If I spit on it the rotor, it sizzles like a frying pan. There is brake dust all over the wheel, more so than on any other wheels. I jacked it up, and tried to spin it by hand, and it is very hard. You can do it with 2 hands, but it certainly doesn't spin freely. The truck will roll if you put it on a hill, but it does weigh over 4700 lbs so I would expect it to. Doesn't seem like it is the parking brake- I sprayed some water on the front of the rotor after it cooled down, and rolled the wheel and it smears when the front brake pad goes through it, so it seems like it's the caliper that may be frozen. Any thoughts? Is there a simpler fix than tearing into the brake assembly?

 

Thanks for all the help. Can someone answer this simple question- Do you need a scan to bleed the brakes? What if I'm only replacing a rear caliper?

 

you should have the brakes pressure bled

 

And how is this done?

 

If its getting so hot that you're hearing the clicking noise you probably need to examine and possibly replace some parts. IIRC you have disk brakes in back. That said Im leaning towards a sticking caliper which I don't know how bleeding the brakes will fix it.

No offense intended but since you're asking the questions you are, I'd recommend having a qualified tech look at this and not do it yourself. Brakes = life. You screw them up, you screw other more serious things.

At a minimum get a buddy who knows what they're doing to help you. That's what I did to learn how to replace my pads, rebuild the caliper, rebuild my master cylinder, etc.

Doing brakes w/out this kind of guidance is a precursor for a Darwin Award.... I.E. the last thing you probably want to do is screw this up due to ignorance and then get into a wreck and kill/injure/maim someone.

HTH.

 

Let me rephrase this, I do know how to change pads rotors, and calipers. So the question is:

IS A SCAN TOOL NEEDED TO CHANGE THE CALIPER, OR CAN THEY BE BLED MANUALLY?

 

Are you "asking" for help or demanding it?

As soon as you start paying me, you can DEMAND MY HELP.[sm=lildevil.gif]

 

Asking- or I'll send you fitty cents.

 

sounds like the pistonin the caliper is getting stuck. you could try just compressing the piston back into the caliper like you're changing pads to try and free it up. also i would recomend taking off the disk just to look at the parking brake to make sure its not something with that. if compressing it doesn't work just replace the caliper no point making a big deal about an easy fix