I smelled a burning stench when stopping in traffic yesterday. Once I got home, I walked around the car and determined it was coming from the passenger side rear. The wheel was hot, too hot to touch, while the others were fine . I jumped on here to search and found four possibilities:

1) The brake caliper, perhaps the slider pins, seized up.
2) The e-brake didn't fully release.
3) Bad wheel bearing.
4) TSB 011201 - the popping or clicking from the differential/rear axle area, which can cause the wheel bearing to go bad.

My e-brake has never had an issue. I parked my car on a slight hill, released the e-brake and it rolled fine. I doubt it's a bad wheel bearing, as I haven't had any sort of loud noise that accompanies that. As far as the TSB, I definitely have the popping out of reverse and first gear, but I've had that for thousands of miles without a problem. This leaves the brake seizure. I felt a gap between the pad and rotor and even put my car in neutral to see how easily I could push it. It rolled easy, leading me to think the brake isn't seized for now.

So what is it? Can brakes seize up intermittently? Can I expect this to happen one day and not the next? (I couldn't get a clear answer searching.) If that's the case, I assume I still need to rebuild the caliper.

Any help is appreciated.

 

You need to take that wheel off and look around. Sure, brakes can seize intermittently. If it's your caliper you probably have uneven pad wear.

 

very few people take off their brake slider pins and lube them once a year. I make sure to do that as regular maintenance, very easy to do and it prevents this type of problem, you also get to to check the pad level wear at the same time before problems occur. It could be a different problem but once you get it figured out try to do some basic maintenance on the 4 corners on a yearly basis. If by chance you have done this on your car then it might be a different issue. I also inspect and lubricate the parking brake mechanism while I'm in there for added measure, not sure if it does much but one less thing to worry about.

 

and just for shits and giggles i bleed the whole system every year too. keeps my fluid fresh. fluid can burn from all the heat of the system and ef up your master and slave. smart thing to do this for the clutch lines as well. keeps every thing running like a well oiled machine. pun intended!

 

check the square cut seal on the caliper with problems.

 

yeah excellent advice as well !. When I got my car recently (used MY02) the clutch fluid was pretty black. I sucked out the fluid with a turkey baster just to swap fluid in the MC. I thought the MC had a rubber bladder inside of it because the walls of the MC were completely black after I put clean fluid in it, but it was crud inside the MC that was plastered to the walls. I had to scrub it out and then swap the fluid in the entire system. She will get regular maintenance from here on out.

 

Dragging brakes would be my first guess, but in my experience once a caliper piston seizes, it doesn't release on its own, meaning it'll stay seized. So the fact that your car still rolls easily, suggests it's not a brake issue.

I find it hard to imagine a wheel bearing issue generating that much heat without some sort of noise while driving/coasting/turning...

IMO, I think your first step would be to take the caliper off the slide pins, verify they move properly, remove the brake pads, check their condition, and check the condition of the rubber dust boot (if its torn, you likely got gunk down in between the piston and caliper, which will require a rebuilt kit to fix.)

 

definitely a seized piston means it wouldn't release on its own.


how many miles do you have on your brakes? if there was any uneven wear, is it possible that the pads have worn prematurely down to the backing plate?