I feel your pain! I’ve:
- Also taken a rotor off with a puller tool
- Used a Milwaukee 2767 1/2” impact that barely got the lug nuts off my friend’s 2015 328ix
- Used an emergency jack and 4X4” pieces of wood to remove a stuck rear wheel off the hub face
- Cut caliper bolts in half to drive them out
- And probably a million other adventures I’ve blocked out of my memory
Anti-seize makes life better. Every yesterday I took 6 hours to install a hitch on my FIL’s 2012 Tacoma. Had to chase every thread and clean every bolt. Their suggested DIY time was 2 hours :-(
Anti seize all the things!!
Add me to the camp that slathers the brake rotor hat and hub surface with it. Makes all the difference in the world in the rust belt. Have owned plenty of cars long enough to have it pay off on the next round of brakes, or aiding in disassembly for an unrelated repair (like removing brakes to change a wheel bearing)
i put it on the studs/lugnuts and wheel mating surface too, as my father did before me. That seems to really get the internets panties in a twist. People that haven’t dealt with rust belt salt and corrosion just don’t understand.
xflowgolf said:
Anti seize all the things!!
i put it on the studs/lugnuts too.
GRM meltdown in 3...2...1
and later, we'll discuss strut tower braces just for S&G 
Dead_Sled said:
In reply to John Welsh :
As a fellow ohioan, I just want to let you know I'm laughing hysterically right now 
.
I. Drove an escort for a few months in college. It was horrible. We ripped a chunk out of the pass front rotor during a weekend brake job. We couldn't get the rotor off and I had nothing else to drive so we threw pads on that side and put it back together. It braked "fine" at higher speeds but anything under 10 it would lock up.
I'd pull up next to someone at a light and lock the tire for the last 10 feet. I tried to keep a straight face and just keep looking forward like nothing happened. I was in Elyria so it wasn't that out of place.
^^^^^ This made me lol because it sounds like something I would do.
Everything in this thread is gospel for #rustbeltlife
Someone here once said (and I love), "the Mason Dixon line is the point where you stop using Loc-tite and start using Anti-seize."
Edit: that quote goes back to Logdog back in this thread about Anti-seize.
This past winter I started rinsing the winter car at the end of the day. My attached garage stays above freezing on all but the coldest days.. A quick rinse underneath, wheels, body dilutes the effects of salt. I also use fluid film. This won’t work for everyone but I think it helps combat NE winters.
John Welsh said:
Someone here once said (and I love), "the Mason Dixon line is the point where you stop using Loc-tite and start using Anti-seize."
Edit: that quote goes back to Logdog back in this thread about Anti-seize.
LOL! I should make Tshirts!
In reply to logdog :
You should be in the Say What section of GRM.
Shirts would be nice. Then I could say, "been there, done that, got the t-shirt."
Could be a good nomination for something like Bangshift
Some more of the story. The "kids are now in bed version."
What pains me most about this whole brake job debacle is that I know that I did not put on these front pads/rotors. I do what I can to keep the fleet running but I have a dedicated shop that does my other work for and at good prices/relationship. I'm sure it was winter when I just told the shop to go ahead and do them for me. A situation where I did not want to do them myself in the cold. Now, I can not really say that it is the fault of the shop if the caliper is sticking, but...
It sure seemed to me that the slide pins were completely dry and good god, could you please use some anti-seize?!
This becomes a delicate balance now. I want to complain but I do not want to rock the boat/relationship either. The shop lets me bring parts that they install for me. I'll likely have them install a caliper because I just don't want to really mess with brake fluid and bleeding, etc.
Part of the relationship we have is that if I need a rush job, they are good about moving me to the front of the line. As usual, I tell them things like, "this one is not a rush job." This means, get the big dollar for the eager customers first and let my project wait for when things slow down. What this currently means to me is that for nearly 2 weeks now, my Pontiac Vibe has been sitting in their lot waiting to get rear diff bearings installed. Sure, I know the weeks leading up to a travel holiday like the 4th is a busy shop time. We are also in the height of tourist season. I get it. I too have been busy and it is not like I have had time to do it either.
But, now I have a Vibe that needs bearings and a Mazda that needs a caliper and a Montero that needs some AC service. I think I'm gonna have to play the Rush Card. I really don't want to put in a " brake job complaint" on top of all that.
Well I am also a proponent of anti-seize on the hub face. I’ve never had anything that bad in 25 years of Michigan living. South east Michigan love of salt on the roads comes from the fact that Detroit was built on top of the salt mine. The roads are white all winter, not From snow, just from berkeleying salt. Having said all that I have never seen anything that bad. That is a neglected POS not typical. My 08 c30 has lived through 11 Michigan winters and isn’t anywhere near that bad.
Another interesting piece of this brake job saga.
I ordered the new brake pads and rotors through RockAuto. Doing the typical RA dance to keep shipping prices down and everything from one warehouse I settled on cheap rotors , Durago Brand ( a choice of cheap rotors that I am now maybe regretting after this experience of what could be cheap rotors) and Power Stop ceramic pads.
I put the order in on a Saturday. By that afternoon I got notice that the parts would ship from Huron, OH which is the town next door to me. I realized this could only be one place and that is the local parts place called World Auto Parts which is under 5 miles from my house. According the the shipping confirm my order is expected to arrive Tuesday but by Monday morning has still not left the building. Since I was right over that way anyhow, I stopped in. I had hoped that I could pick up the box. I don't even care if I pay the shipping. It just gets me the box 1 day earlier.
Cut to the chase... They would not hand me the box. I offered to cancel the RA order via my phone and just buy the parts over the counter but they were quick to assure me that the price would be more. It was just better for me to wait until the next day.
This experience leads me to believe (as I have sort of expected) that RA has some elements of what Amazon is doing. There are probably parts in RA owned warehouses but there is also the "marketplace" aspect where RA is also filling orders from private owned company inventories and RA commissions or pays the private owner. This has to be the reason that RA has so many things spread out of so many warehouses when you fill items into the cart. It's not only coming from different places, its coming from different people.
My Fed Ex ship tracking shows the box was picked up late Monday from the parts place. Went to the local FedEx office where it likely came off the truck, was sorted and then that night was added right back on to the same truck that delivers things in the 5 miles surrounding my house. All arrived right and on time. For $8.99 in shipping I got one heavy box containing 2 rotors and pads.
Adrian_Thompson said:
Well I am also a proponent of anti-seize on the hub face. I’ve never had anything that bad in 25 years of Michigan living. South east Michigan love of salt on the roads comes from the fact that Detroit was built on top of the salt mine. The roads are white all winter, not From snow, just from berkeleying salt. Having said all that I have never seen anything that bad. That is a neglected POS not typical. My 08 c30 has lived through 11 Michigan winters and isn’t anywhere near that bad.
I have bought or involved with buying three clean old cars from the Detroit area.
My Quantum was solid when I bought it (just off of 8 Mile Road) save for rust around the right rear quarter.
After three years...
Five years in Cleveland dissolved it to the point that the car started to fold up in half when the flatbed was dragging it away.
A friend bought a '79 RX-7 that was not just solid, but all of the fenders had points and all of the fasteners zipped right off. After two years in Cleveland, the driver's seat was dragging on the ground because the floor was separating.
I bought my S60R from up dere. I dreaded having to do the transmission because I was going to have to pull the subframe, with the car on jackstands, with minimal tools and no torches. I was more than pleasantly surprised: It was the only 12 year old car I have ever seen where the stabilizer links and ball joint nuts came off without torching. Or any effort at all, they all just zipped apart. (EvanB was there. I was giggling in disbelief)
I live in the rust belt. Rust sucks. I use a standard length/weight long handled sledge hammer on rotors that don't come off easy. First time I used it I wasted half an hour trying to be gentle. Got mad that it was taking so long and just hit it nice and hard a couple times and it came off no problem. Other side hit it nice and hard and was off in like 3 hits.
I've dealt with stuck calipers by just sanding off the rust from the slides and adding lots of lube. Seems to have worked ok so far. Easier and much cheaper than doing a caliper change.
The trouble with hitting the rotors hard enough to actually remove them is that you damage the wheel bearings. Better to cut them with the whizz wheel, This may relate to a new noise in the OP's Mazda
Wheel bearing is a real possibility. I whomped on the driver side really hard and with great frustration. Maybe later today I will pull the wheel and recheck/re-tighten my work and investigate further.
I would pull the wheel.
Sell the car.
And move south.
My last brake job took less than 30 minutes.
In reply to Toyman01 :
Who buys a car with 3 wheels?
Stampie??
TurnerX19 said:
The trouble with hitting the rotors hard enough to actually remove them is that you damage the wheel bearings.
Not that I've ever experienced. It is SOP for doing brake work.
I keep hearing that anti seize doesn’t work but over the course of 400,000 salt filled miles I never had trouble pulling a drum or rotor off my Malibu by hand once I started putting a little on the hub face a and the centering hole.
In reply to Wally :
So you have never had a drum make a 1/8" thick lip of rust on the friction surface to keep it from coming past the shoes that you can't back off because the adjuster is rusted solid? (The Ford Taurus/Windstar syndrome. Dealt with by knocking one of the studs in, and beating the adjustr into submission with a punch through the stud hole.) Or a rotor with a similarly huge lip of rust to lock it onto a hub?
I like the high temp paint idea, myself.
I use anti-seize liberally, but for new uncoated rotors I also like to spray the hats with weld-through primer before installing. The zinc coating is a decent rust inhibitor, and it doesn't burn off. Works on exhausts too.
In reply to Knurled. :
Thankful I haven’t, I have been lucky(?) that I do most of the work myself and pulled the drums every spring to make sure everything was working and clean.
