under braking my car pulls left, and on the other hand sometimes my car pulls right under normal driving

yesterday my front right caliper (i guess) stuck on me and when i got home it starting smoking so i doused it with water to cool it down

unfortunately im banning my car from the road until the brakes are fixed

im wondering where the best place to get replacement parts is?

ie uap/napa, or CDN tire, etc....

id go aftermarket but unfortunately cash is tight
any help would be great!!!

thanks

Kyle

 

If the car is pulling right without brakes that is nothing new. The 245 tires catch just about every rut-n-the-road and the last 3 f-bodies I had drifted to the right if you let them. McPherson Strut suspensions naturally go with the 'tilt' of the road.

Next time should reconsider hitting hot cast brake parts with water. Tends to make them cool unevenly and warp.

Calipers and pads are pretty cheap for these cars I'd expect to do both sides on the front for under $200 in parts and probably get some rotors thrown in too. Be sure to clean and re-grease your front bearings because after being superheated the grease will be no good anymore. Might want to check the brake fluid reservoir as well -- if the fluid has brown swirls in it it is toast and needs to be changed.

One word of advice -- DON'T GO TO CANADIAN TIRE for anything but car wax and ping pong *****. I say use your local UAP shop. They have decent parts. Also, you can probably do a better job on your brakes than most brake shops. Be careful selecting shops as most will beat up your wallet pretty badly on brake work. I know one guy paid $1200 for what could only have amounted to $300-400 in parts and $100 in labour. Scam artists.

good luck,
RP.

 

Check out your local GM Dealer FIRST!! you'll be surprised what kind of prices they have... and if its a bit more, I'd go for AcDelco.

 

Been to local GM dealers and gone in circles with them a few times but they always stand by their stuff and won't hack repairs together either.

RP.

 

Camaro's with drums will pull towards whatever the road says it should pull too. Weight distribution in car though will say which way it will always pull to on an even surface. If you have more questions after reading my 1 am brake guide, feel free to message me and if near by I'd be more than happy to assist (with prior and lots of notice of course to lend a hand or a visual guide.)

I've done all my own brake work thus far. For parts I have a local parts store Jon's Auto Parts. You should be able to find something similar. Raybestos vented pads are the way to go for street driving. Only cost me $44 so I can afford to be hard on them, but they last anyways so I can be hard on them. For rotors, they have some good quality alloys, generic and the inbetween stuff. I've tried all of them and am surprised that even the crappy ones work fine. At the moment I'm with Raybestos rotors, pads, drums etc. I changed all my caliper pins to GM Aluminum ones (its all they sell for replacements anyways), I also got caliper kits from GM only 2 for the front, raybestos drum kit for rear. I wouldn't get slotted rotors even if they do look nice. They require lots of heat to work efficiently and for a street driver I'm pretty easy on the brakes anyways. Plus I can't seem to justify look for loss of efficiency and price. The vented pads already do the work of the vented rotors. If your caliper is busted though, you may want to look into upgrading to something better since you're gonna take it off anyways, new braided brake lines, and 2 cylinder calipers would do nicely for even brake wear and firmer braking.

Assembling rear drums is not an easy task for the uninitiated. It took me awhile to remember the stuff I did back in highschool. Even then I ended up comparing left and right symmetry wise to get it to work. Front brakes and discs are pretty straight forward.

I have a special torque bit for my wrench, a c-clamp for pushing the piston back and wheel bearing grease. You'll also need new lock pins for the main nut of the rotor and 180 grit sandpaper. use a flathead screwdriver to remove the rotor nut cap.

Take it all apart starting with the caliper pins first. Use your screwdriver to pry the brake assembly away from the rotor. Unless you're junking the assembly, tie it up else you put a good amount of strain on the rubber brake hose. Remove pads. You'll want to reuse the bracket on the inner caliper brake pad unless you're going to freplace it all. Pry open the rotor cap and cut the lock pin. Unscrew the nut and the rotor's weight will cause the whole thing to fall apart usually. You should end up with the rotor, a washer and 2 wheel bearings, both of which only fit 1 way on the rotor and are different sizes. If it didnt't go into 4 pieces, separate it all. you're junking the old rotor I presume. You keep the bearings and washer.

At this point I'd take off the old caliper assembly and put in a new one. It should be pretty straight forward at this point, just disconnect it from the hose and reconnect the new one, or disconnect the old one with the old rubber hose at the main line and replace with new one and braided brake line.

I repack my own bearings, the technique for it is put some on the palm of your hand and then use the bearing to scrape it off until it seeps out the top of the bearing. Then rotate the bearing and continue till all the old grease has been replaced with the new grease. Be very gratuitous with the grease and bearings, on this application a lot of grease is good. Once you've done the inner and outer bearings, replace with new rotor, don't forget the washer on the outside of the outer bearing. Tighten the nut by hand so its all snug then use your wrench and tighten 1/4 and a bit past hand tighten till you can see the hole for the lock pin to fit. Replace the rotor cap, you may need a hammer to get it to fit back snugly.

Clean your hands well before handling the pads and wipe off everything from the rotor now as you won't and shouldn't get anything on it from this point on. If you opted for cheaper non-marked rotors, its time to scrape them up real bad. 180 grit sandpaper is enough to mark it up well. This is to prepare the surface for mating with the pads. Getting high quality rotors, they are usually rough to the feel ie marked for mating already. Cover both sides well with lotsa marks, not deep, like a cd looks like after its been wiped with sand lol.

If you opted to put in new caper assemblies stop at this point and work on other side to this point. With the assembly off you can easily get new brake fluid into the system and do a light bleeding not to mention you won't want to get fluid all over the rotor. This is not the final bleeding though, this is just to get fluid into the assembly. Rear drums are easy to bleed, they bleed inwards and will not coat the assembly.

Install the caliper alignment assembly kit onto the brake housing now, scrape off the old rubber o-rings with a knife or screwdriver and put in the new set. This kit contains 2 rubber o-rings and 2 metal caliper guide cylinders.

Use the C-clamps to back the cylinder's back into the assembly now. Replace the spring onto the inner pad and replace the pads on the assembly then the assembly onto the rotor. If you opted for the raybestos pads, they have a vibration dampener on it so you won't need disk brake quiet, not that it hurts to use it. tighten the caliper pins on the assembly and repeat for other side. Now you can bleed the brakes properly with both installed.

for rear brakes, I won't go into the nitty gritty for drums, but getting the springs in the right place let alone describing how it all fits in is just nuts.

Just some quick tips. If you do the rear drums (if disc, then obviously what works above will work for them, save for emergency brake, but hey those are self adjusting once reconnected to the assembly) I'd replace the master cylinder, brake lines, pads and drum when at it. If you do manage to work the springs and reassemble everything the way to set the rear emergency brakes for drums is to tighten the adjustment bolt completely then pull on the emergency brake with the drum on, around 30 times. This will make the bolt loosen till it has the right setting for your pads. Not to mention that if not tightened, you wouldn't be able to fit the drum on the pads anyways.

Bleed the whole setup and use only DOT 3 fluid or better I think. (If its used for racing you'd use dot 4 but that's overkill and I think if you go higher, the harder time it has dealing with water in system if water gets in. That's why I suggest getting new lines while you messing with the brake system. Its well worth it safety wise and the work can be done yourself within 6 hrs depending on what you do and you have a good idea of what to do. Cost depends on what you spend. Rotors and pads should run up only $150 on average. Drums I forgot what I spent, but even cheaper. I work on this premise front brakes when the warning metal sounds and rear brakes every 3rd warning metal sound of the front. Since 70% of braking is done by the front, I work on a 3 schedule 2/3 1/3 front , front, front/rear, front, front, front rear.

Be warned an entire brake overhaul is not expensive, but not cheap either. After parts you coudl find yourself into the $700 range and nothing is installed yet... Just go with what you need and what you can afford. Obviously need comes before price. You have no choice with price if you need something working.