Started the car on Sunday, went to pull forward and felt something. It felt a little weird driving it at first on the highway, but wasn't sure if my mind was playing games with me.

Drove it last night and felt a noticeable steadily oscillating vibration coming from the right side. I took it to a shop and they claim the right rear caliper has seized and want to:

Replace the right rear caliper and brake hose
Replace rear rotors and pads

Total Estimate with Dealer Parts: $669.708

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Questions

1. Can I remove the right rear pad and drive 270 miles? (Full access to a shop while visiting a friend) Or would the caliper likely contact the rotor at this point? Can it be driven with the pad still in place?
   
2. I'm assuming I should replace the mid and rear lines (which likely failed)?
   
3. How can you tell whether or not the rotors need to be replaced? Keeping in mind I will likely be moving on to another vehicle within a year.
   
4. What's the cheapest online parts source for brake parts? I'm not looking for performance, though the rears do little anyways.
   
5. Am I over looking anything?

Thanks for the help!

 

Anytime this happens to me, I take the wheel off decompress the caliper and make sure the caliper can move freely. if it can't i take the caliper off of the holding bracket clean the bracket up, clean the sliding bolts up and re grease them and clean the whole that the sliding pins go into. i don't remember off the top of my head which part that is on. also you don't want to use to much grease because it will act as a block in there and it wont move freely.

 

The rear caliper requires a special tool to compress it. It requires a rotating tool that "screws" the piston into the caliper (due to the self-adjusting, E-brake mechanism on the rears?). If you simply try to brute-force compress it like with a commonly used C-clamp that you'd use on a front brake caliper, you'll damage a rear caliper.

 

It is not worth $670. remove the caliper, and using needle nose pliers or the special tool from autozone/advance, try to rotate the caliper in. the rears must be turned in, while the fronts can be compressed in. if it won't turn clockwise and screw in (it might turn but not 'catch' and not screw in) then turn it a little bit counter clockwise, then clockwise again. I had one of mine fix itself that way. If the slider pins are rusted in place (seized?), as noted above, you need to pull them out and sand/clean them so they are moving smoothly. If all else fails, I think you can get a new caliper at autozone/advance and put it on, and bleed it, and roll. You can't drive without the pad because the piston will keep pushing out looking for resistance. good luck.

 

Yeah, that

 

Thanks for the responses

Update

Took a further look at it.

I've concluded the caliper seized last Sunday. I didn't realize it and drove it, wearing down the pad. The brake pad is half the size it should be. The speed and wear wasn't enough to noticeably slow the car down, but it heated the rotor and the pad. After it sat, the rotor warped which is why I have a steady oscillation while driving now.

It would not make sense to replace one rotor and not have it balanced with the other side. So I would need a new caliper, rear rotors, rear pads.

I could source the parts for cheaper, but don't really have time or space on a college campus. Family car coming up shortly...

 

your sliders are stuck. keep it simple. this ain't a big deal. $50 new pads at the auto parts store, or maybe not necessary. once you free up the sliders, you may have enough pad to get through until you sell it. Yes, you can replace one rotor. cheaply.

 

Rotors very rarely warp. The brake pads will glaze over and leave deposits on the rotor that make the pads grab and release making it feel like a warp, but its not. You would have to heat a rotor up until it glowed red, to have a chance of actually warping one. Once you get your caliper issue resolved, take the car out and do a few agressive stops from 60 down to about 10 or 15, then repeat a few times. Do not allow the car to completely stop, and drive the car for a few minutes after the last stop to cool the rotors down. That will clean of any deposits and should clear up your ocilations.