Caliper slide pins – possible lubricants

[Razvan]

L.E.: I just realized I forget to give you a very important info: I am posting this question from Romania, a country 5500 miles away, so almost all information about retailers or any other local stuff will be, if not meaningless to me, at least not really helpful.

I have once (in August) changed my brake-pads, using info from some YouTube videos.
My brakes worked fine, from all I could feel, so I thought all is good.

Now, two weeks ago I had to change my tires to my winter ones (after which the weather got much warmer :S ) and then I saw that the right-rear rotor was only partly “clean” – which meant that the brake pad was not stepping (or pushing, or whatever you call it) correctly on the rotor (or disk).

Looking at Eric’s videos, and reading the info on the site, I saw that one possible problem is that I should have greased the caliper slide pins and the contact points on the pads. I must say that I knew when I changed the pads about greasing the caliper slide pins, but when I tried moving them with my hand they felt OK.

Eric recommends using a silicone paste on the caliper slide pins. But from the 5 auto-parts (small) retailers I visited in my town, only one had even heard of silicone paste for this use, and he said he didn’t have it in stock for years, because people didn’t ask for it. I know that caliper repair kits have the paste, but until I am sure I need one, I would like to find a substitute.

I found with some online retailers for auto supplies a ceramic paste that they recommend for use on brake systems:

and also a silicone oil spray:

So my question is – what would you recommend for use on the caliper slide pins?

I have found videos online where the guy removes the caliper, brakes it down to all the pieces, washes the parts (including the rubber protections on the slide pins) with diesel fuel and then uses regular axel grease for putting everything back on. And they say that modern rubbers are made to resist the action of oil lubricants (and even diesel fuel??).

I am not THAT confident about the resistance of “modern rubbers”, but couldn’t we use something else, if the silicone paste is unavailable?

PS: My car is a Hyundai i30 (almost the same as Elantra in the US, I think), built in 2010, gas powered (with a recent LPG modification and tank added). The hand brake (or parking brake) is a drum brake type housed in the rear brake rotor, so there is little complication from that.

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[mckrishes]

I was looking for silicone paste as well, but the stores didn’t have it, but they did have a product called Sil Glyde which is the same thing. I got mine at advance auto but I believe they sell them at napa, autozone and oreilly as well.

[Razvan]

[quote=”Morsa” post=118806]L.E.: I just realized I forget to give you a very important info: I am posting this question from Romania, a country 5500 miles away, so almost all information about retailers or any other local stuff will be, if not meaningless to me, at least not really helpful.[/quote]

Sorry, I forgot to make this info clear in my original post!

[Bob]

Got silicone paste from JB Tool Sales. Click “Tools” at top of this page. Good price, quick ship.

[Andrew]

Where are you in the world? If you’re in the UK try this:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/All-Trade-Direct-Silicone-Lubricate/dp/B00904MO0Q/ref=pd_cp_auto_1

It works well on my caliper slide pins. Good for plumbing too.

Edit: just seen your post about where you are. Still, your best friend here is the internet. If you really can’t get hold of anything suitable, a good clean of the slide pins and bores, and a light coat of ordinary grease is probably better than nothing. When you get hold of some proper stuff you can clean it all off.

[James O’Hara]

I use brake caliper grease to lube all my brake steel on steel rub points and to lube my pins but, if you do this you must must clean everything thoroughly as mixing different greases can cause volatile reactions. I normally use break clean to clean the parts and put new pins and boots in. I have looked at a lot of different places to get silicone grease but, I could not find it other then online and I would rather use something that is readily available then not.

[Andrew]

Another thought – when I ordered new slide pins for our Freelander they came not with silicone grease but a red grease that turned out to be ‘red rubber grease’. Maybe you could find that somewhere.

[Kenneth]

Isn’t plumbers grease, a silicone grease, made to lube stuff very much like caliper pins. And being a silicone product, and safe for rubber, wouldn’t it do

[Andrew]

[quote=”Kenneth07ex” post=118833]Isn’t plumbers grease, a silicone grease, made to lube stuff very much like caliper pins. And being a silicone product, and safe for rubber, wouldn’t it do[/quote]

I think you’re right.

+1 for plumber’s grease.

[Lorrin Barth]

I was looking around the forums just seeing what lubricant people use for lubricating caliper pins. Ha, I should have made a list. For one thing owners seem to have a lot of trouble with caliper pins seizing. One recommendation was to service them every six months. All sorts of products are mentioned, apparently some don’t work so well. Toyota recommends lithium soap base glycol grease. I don’t have any of that.

All this to protect a rubber boot which costs next to nothing to replace.

[Andrew]

[quote=”barneyb” post=118843]
All this to protect a rubber boot which costs next to nothing to replace.[/quote]

True. But some cars, like mine, have a rubber sleeve on the lower pin as a damper. It swells with grease and seizes the pin. It really doesn’t make any difference if you remove it though. I suppose it’s there to stop a small click on braking.

[Razvan]

It’s not the cost of the repair kit for the caliper (there are versions with only the rubber parts) but the point of using the correct solution for my problem (I told you I’m a bit obsessed when I get myself started…).

[Author]

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