Brake issue on 2011 Jeep Grand Cherokee

Vidar

Vidar

TJ Enthusiast
Joined
Feb 26, 2020
Messages
236
Location
Pennsylvania
Not sure if anyone here can help, but I figured I’d ask. My wife has a new to us 2011 Jeep Grand Cherokee Laredo. We purchased it 2 months ago and it has 86K on it. Was driving today and noticed a very strong smell coming from it when we stopped. Shortly after we got started driving again, I got a message saying to service the tire pressure monitoring system (although I’m pretty sure that was just a red herring). When we got home, the rear driver brake was squeaking. I got out, and found the rotor was burning hot. It appears the caliper seized up.
Anyone experienced this on a WK2? Advise on where to start?
 
I have a 2012 wk2... i havent experienced that particular problem.

My advice is to take it in and have them run a duagnostic... there can be something else wrong since its a can-bus type system.
 
So I figured I’d post my solution for posterity.
I took the caliper off yesterday to inspect it. The piston was extremely hard to compress. I pulled the caps off the slide pin boots and took out the slide pins. The grease was almost completely dried out, and there was some pretty good varnish built up. I sanded the pins with 1000 grit and cleaned out the boots really well. Then I greased the hell out of the pins and reassembled everything. Afterwards, I was able to move the piston by hand. Put everything back together, and bled.
After test driving and pounding the breaks hard, that rotor was the coolest of the four. So the problem ended up being tried out grease in the slide pins.
 
While you may have solved the issue, if the piston was stuck before, it will probably stick again. If it were mine, I'd flush the entire brake system and replace the rear pads and calipers. I would not give brakes a second chance to prove me wrong. Calipers are cheap.
 
Flivver250 said:
While you may have solved the issue, if the piston was stuck before, it will probably stick again. If it were mine, I'd flush the entire brake system and replace the rear pads and calipers. I would not give brakes a second chance to prove me wrong. Calipers are cheap.
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The piston itself wasn’t stuck, just the slide pins. Given the vehicle is 9 years old and they are the original calipers, the grease just dried up in the boots. The pads are still almost new, and the rotors still looked great. So I’m fairly confident that I fixed the problem by cleaning and re-greasing the pins. I’m going to do the rest of them as preventative maintenance so I don’t experience this issue again.
 
Flivver250 said:
Sorry, I misunderstood the above. If your pads are almost new, why were the slides all dried up?
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That I couldn’t tell you. We purchased it in February and have only put about 2K on it so far. I’m guessing the pads were replaced within the last year or so, but they probably didn’t check the slides if it was functioning properly. The front pads and rotors were done during the dealer inspection before we bought it, so I’m thinking the rears were done fairly recently in the past before the PO traded it.
I read on a WK2 forum that the 11-13 models had some issues where the calipers seize. My guess is the boots either don’t keep the grease, or they used subpar grease in them.
 
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