Brake caliper, or hose?

My daughter’s ‘07 Fit started getting a squeal from the RF corner a week or 2 ago, that became constant this weekend. I pulled the wheel & the pads were both pretty much all the way down to metal, so I got a set & just finished installing them. 

I had to open the bleeders to retract the pistons far enough for the new pads & gravity-bled both sides, which seemed to work. However, as soon as I backed it out of the garage I could feel it was dragging. I took a short drive around the block so I could do a couple low-speed hard stops, but by the time I got home the RF brakes were smoking. 

The RF pads were more worn than the LF, but the inner & outer pads on both sides were worn evenly. I was going to lube the guide pins, but they’re nice & smooth. 

The ABS light is off, so I don’t think that could be a problem, could it possibly be the caliper or brake hose?

Check for a metal strap that holds the hose. The rust will swell the strap, pinching the hose. Stepping on the brake puts 1000s of pounds of preasure on the fluid, more than enough to make it through. But there is almost no preasure to push it back to the master cylinder, so the brake takes miles to release, if at all. 

This can get so bad, you can feel the resistance steping in the brake when bleeding the affected wheel.  

In reply to lrrs :

Interesting, I’d have never expected that! I think I’ll go ahead & get the hose too just to be safe. 

If it does not have a metal strap it is almost certainly the hose, so do it... This seems to have become more common in recent years, I almost never saw a "check valve" hose 40 years ago. Now it is common.

Drive the car until the wheel is noticeably sticking.

Jack it up and pull the wheel off quickly.

Crack the bleeder and see if you can now freely spin the rotor... if so, it's a hose issue... if not, it's a sticking caliper.

How smoothly do the pads slide in the brackets out of curiosity? 

9/10 times people hammer the stupid pads in rather than sand the edges down to make them fit properly.  Aftermarket brake hardware (the shims that the pad ears slide agaisnt) I've found are a crapshoot too and sometimes are thicker than stock causing problems.  I've had sticking pads cause excess heat buildup which eventually causes caliper failure.

Open the bleeder.  If the rotor turns freely it's the hose if it's still stuck then it's caliper time.

In reply to flatlander937 :

I’ve never had any brake pads, OE or aftermarket, slide smoothly in the brackets. Are they supposed to?

In reply to APEowner :

I almost tried that, but decided to post on GRM instead :)

In reply to Pete Gossett :

Yes, actually they are supposed to slide freely, but your experience is the norm...

Aftermarket pads suck for dimensional correctness.  I have had to file the ears on just about every aftermarket pad I’ve used  over the last few years.  

Surprised noone has mentioned this yet:   A lot of times when people completely remove a caliper from a bracket (as opposed to just removing one pin and flipping it upwards etc) they accidentally do a full 360 with it and bolt it back down with a now-twisted hose. This will cause the brake to release slowly. It will stick while driving when you use the brakes pretty often, but if you let the car sit for a while and jack up that one wheel and spin it, it will spin freely.  Check that you didn't put a twist on that hose. 

Just went through this on my 07 expedition. Replaced both front calipers with new pads and rotors and it still stuck. Replacing both front hoses did the trick. 

Vigo said:

Surprised noone has mentioned this yet:   A lot of times when people completely remove a caliper from a bracket (as opposed to just removing one pin and flipping it upwards etc) they accidentally do a full 360 with it and bolt it back down with a now-twisted hose. This will cause the brake to release slowly. It will stick while driving when you use the brakes pretty often, but if you let the car sit for a while and jack up that one wheel and spin it, it will spin freely.  Check that you didn't put a twist on that hose. 

I actually had to remove both calipers because I didn’t have a big enough c-clamp(that wasn’t bent) to retract them. The RF one definitely took more effort to retract though. 

The new caliper & hose should be in this week, so I’ll have the long holiday weekend to get it swapped out.