Out of nowhere, my right rear pad appears to be dragging on the rotor. I only see this intermittently, but when it happens, it appears to be hot as Hades. Also, it stinks of a burning rubber smell. The emergency brake doesn't appear to be sticking. Would that heat up both sides? Anyway, the drivers side is fine. Any ideas? Caliper sticking? Rotor warped? The pad is only half worn and I've only got 45000 miles on the truck. I replaced the front pads at 35k miles with Wagner ceramics. They actually didn't really need it, but I had the wheel off and decided, why not? I'm searching these forums and finding a lot of complaining about orig manufacture brake design. This has been the only problem I've had with this truck. Great vehicle so far. Any help would be appreciated.

 

This is a 2005 F150 XLT SuperCrew

 

sounds like your caliper is toast. the rubber smell is the seal(s) at the piston. a common ford problem,,,i have one front pass side wanting to drag, (at 22k) but not enough to cause excess heat, yet. Just get a rebuilt one and bleed that side and your good to go, provided the heat didn't warp the rotor. You will know it if it did. I had a front one do the same thing on an old '82 f150 many yrs ago. rossford

 

sometimes the rubber o-ring inside the piston starts to stick this can be caused by corrosion from salt accumulation during the winter and I just had to replace my rear pads on my expy cause they were wore down causing it to start dragging off and on like yours is

new pads and mine is good as new (but I went to slotted and cross drilled rotors just to be sure)

 

has anyone tried to pull a piston out and try to clean it? just wondering, i was going to try that on front one, but they wont budge, even compressed air hose wouldnt do anythng. If it was corrision/crude , you might could do that as long as the oring/seals arent damaged. But what the heck for 50 bucks you can get a rebuilt back one. I dont see how it would heal itself....rossford

 

You could rebuild it yourself. Haynes manual has a step by step, if my memory does not fail me. You could also pick up a reman caliper. All depends on your personal preference.

 

My left rear brake occassionally drags after using the emergency brake. Sometime it is fine, other it hangs up a little. You cant feel it, but after about 2 or 3 miles it heats up enough to fill a shimmey.

If I stop and set and release the e-brake a few times, it seems to release completly.

I took it in for service at 6500 miles and they checked it out and told me it is a known problem. The advised the lubed it up good so it shouldn't handg up again. Then it did it again within a week........

 

I greased the emergency brake cable where I could and it appears to have fixed this. Also, my rotor didn't warp from the heat. There is a tech bulletin on this very issue that Denny mentioned. Thanks for the replies folks...

 

If your parking brake systems the same as my '01 screw, its the parking brake linkage that the cable is hooked to at the brake shoes that freeze up. After every winter I have to take my parking brakes apart and remove the rust from the linkage, and regrease. I found that if you use break caliper slid grease, they wont freeze up as bad as if you use anti-seize on them. When one seizes, the other side will still work fine. Might be your pboblem only having on side hot.