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I had a bear of a time getting stuck wheels off of the rotors and drums on my car. I eventually gave up and had the dealership do a “tire rotation” just so they would take them off for me. They did and then hours later I tried to get the wheels off and they were stuck again! I had to hammer the sidewalls hard and they did pop off. Looks like just the rust on the center hub protrusion held them on again.
I brushed the rust off so the wheels slid on and off the hub protrusion nicely but before I put everything back together I rubbed silglyde onto the hat of the rotor and the center protrusion as well as the points on the wheel that mount to the rotor (the center hole and the portions around each wheel stud hole).
Did the same with the drums too. I did not apply any grease to the parts that actually bear friction obviously. Just the hats of the rotors and the outside of the drums. Now I’m wondering though whether it was a mistake to do this? Mainly if the grease migrates down to the friction surfaces won’t I be screwed? Granted it is silicone grease that’s resistant to water washout (according to AGS it washes out 1% maximum after a one hour wash out test) and it remains solid up to temperatures of 400 degrees Fahrenheit. I only put a light coating on the hat and drum surface (put maybe half a pea-sized blob on my finger and rubbed it in so the surface is greasy but not more than 1mm. I may have been more generous around the center hub protrusion where it juts out as well as the center hole on the wheel.
Does anyone else do this? Or should I remove it quickly? Don’t even think it’s a good idea to use brake cleaner to remove this since it might just melt it and spread it, will have to rub it off with a shop towel or something first and then brake clean it using a rag or something rather than shooting it on.
I would have used anti-seize but that silvery stuff gets everywhere. No thanks. Did I mess up? Was this a stupid thing to do?
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I’d suggest removing the grease. Brakes, on an unusually busy traffic day, can reach over 400F. (Some race cars can reach upwards of 1200F)
I’m sure there is an equation about it, but a 4000lb vehicle needs to stop. It stops by applying friction to a spinning surface (rotors) and the energy from moving your vehicle is transferred into heat.
I typically apply grease to that area, a using a small brush to paint a light layer around the hub nosing and then a very thin “film” on the rotor/drum hub area. You also want to clean up the backsides of the rims, the hub contact surface, and apply a film on that as well. I do mean a thin film on all parts except the hub nosing contact area, where a “thin layer” is ok. Very good to avoid the Anti-seize, I hate that stuff and it dries out in a very bad way over time. I do, however use Redline CV-2 grease for this kind of thing that has a 800*F drop point. If I only need to put a little bit around the hub nosing only, cheaper grease that may get runny under extreme braking heat is acceptable. To put your concerns mostly to bed, the fact is that if the grease gets hot and runs out from between the rim and rotor, it will just get on the inside of the rim and naturally avoid the braking surface. Doesn’t matter if it’s getting thrown out while the wheel is moving or gravity is doing it’s job with the wheels stopped, it will get on the rim.
I just remembered I have pics of how my 205k mile Honda rims look after cleaning them up to ride smooth:
A little smear of grease wont do any damage, it sounds like you didn’t put any near the pads/shoes so I would not worry about it to much. A good clean surface is all you need on the rims.
Grease? I do not use grease on any parts that turn hot. grease cakes. What’s wrong with anti seize? Copper based one?
I see this everyday at my shop… With a wire brush we clean all the rust off and add anti seize to the hub. And every time you rotate your tires clean the old anti seize and put new anti seize. Works like a charm.
[quote=”KnowNothing” post=136470]
Does anyone else do this? Or should I remove it quickly? Don’t even think it’s a good idea to use brake cleaner to remove this since it might just melt it and spread it, will have to rub it off with a shop towel or something first and then brake clean it using a rag or something rather than shooting it on.
I would have used anti-seize but that silvery stuff gets everywhere. No thanks. Did I mess up? Was this a stupid thing to do?[/quote]
Yes I do this but not with that product (and I would not use a “grease” product for that application either).
Basically alloy rims will fuse themselves to the hub and rotor hat surface over a couple of years and can be very difficult to remove. It is bad enough when tire places and workshops over tighten your wheel nuts making them almost impossible to remove but then finding that the wheel will not come off the hub is just as bad. I wonder how many people have had flat tires and found they could not budge the wheel. Loosening the wheel nuts by a small margin and running the vehicle back a forth to try and un-stick the wheel is probably what people have to resort to.
With one of my previous cars (still fairly new at the time ) I tried removing both front wheels to check my brakes for wear and I found it impossible to remove the wheels even by using a rubber mallet on them to try and tap them loose. I had to go to a tire place. After that, I well and truly solved that problem though.
One of my current cars is 2.5 years old and spends most of its time garaged. When checking the front wheels recently(which had been removed by the dealership only a few days earlier), I found the wheels hard to remove even then because of rust around the hub area in particular. I cleaned up the hub and the rotor hats very well (especially where the alloy wheel center contacts it) with a small wire brush on a cordless drill, some hand wire brushing and some wet and dry sand paper. I also cleaned up the alloys so the centers were nice and clean especially where the center bore slides onto the vehicle hub. I then cleaned the surfaces with brake cleaner and finished off with cleaning the shiny rotor surfaces with brake cleaner and drying them off well.
My next step may not be recommended practice but it always works well on my cars with zero issues. I use a high end synthetic chain lubricating oil specifically made for lubricating chains and other parts of bicycles. This is a very thin oil. I smear tiny amounts of this lubricant around the inside and outside surfaces of the hub that are subject to rusting and also on the vertical rotor hat surfaces that contact the wheel center. I also smear a small amount onto the wheel center where it contacts the hub and rotor hat surfaces. I then use a couple of face tissues to pick up any obvious excess and to dab over the entire surfaces where the oil has been smeared to ensure that there would never be any lubricant leaching out or finding its way onto the rotor surface where the brake pads contact. I then clean the entire rotor again with brake cleaner on all areas not smeared with lubricant. This only takes a few minutes and the wheels slide on easily. More importantly, next time you have to remove the wheel you will find it has not glued itself to the hub and rotor hat surfaces.
I have also done this using the same lubricant on previous vehicles and have had absolutely zero issues after years of operation because I am careful with the amount of lubricant used and where it is placed so there can never be any prospect of the lubricant leaching out and running on to the shiny rotor surfaces. The process does work in stopping the alloy wheels fusing to the surfaces they contact when fitted up and the wheels do come away smoothly when the nuts are removed.
I do not know what the synthetic formulation of Silglyde is but given what it is designed for I cannot imagine you would have any issues at all using that product on the hub and rotor hat surfaces you treated provided you did not use too much but just a minimal smear of product. You do not want it migrating to other parts of the rotor. If you think you may have used a bit much then remove a couple of wheels and check and use a paper towel or face tissue to wipe away any excess product. It is heat resistant to over 400 F degrees so it is not going to dry up and it should continue to prevent rust build up on the surfaces it has covered given that it is designed to resist corrosion on metal surfaces.
It may be worth pulling off a wheel in 3 or 4 months to see how well it is working.
Alright cool then I guess other people do this too.
I only put a thin layer and I did put a layer both on the rotor hat and drum as well as the wheels (where the wheels contact the rotor hat and drum).
SilGlyde is not so much bearing grease or multipurpose grease, it’s safe for rubber, designed for brake parts and people swear by it for brakes. I was looking for an alternative because I didn’t want to use the a-seize and this was the next logical thing. I figured if it’s used near the rotors anyway (on the backs of pads, between shims and on all caliper and bracket to brake pad contact points) then it ought to be fine.
Multipurpose greases would probably melt and run since they usually go up to about 250 degrees while SilGlyde is at least 400 degrees and I figure the rotors won’t get that hot anyway.
The reason I don’t want to use anti-seize is because I don’t like the silvery residue that gets on everything. If I need to change to a spare wheel outside somewhere I would hate to deal with that. Plus I heard people used it for brakes (which you probably shouldn’t) and it ended up running even though it claims to resist temps of 1600 degrees or more. I can’t get the copper kind around me, I only have a bottle of the nickel kind. So I would use anti-seize for under the rotor to prevent the rotor from sticking to hub since that’s a more permanent location but for where I’m more likely to touch I would go with SilGlyde.
I also did wirebrush the rust off the hat a little and the center hub protrusion but this was only something I wanted to do to tide me over a month. In a few weeks I’m going to take everything off and seriously go at the rust with machine power (dremel wire brush) and I guess I’ll revisit the grease at that point.
My friend usually use hi-temp silicon paste. It seems to work pretty well for him. I mean people use it on brake pad to avoid rusting so it should work the same for wheels. But at the same time people use two sets of tires here so I don’t it would works the same if you leave wheels on for years.
Not sure if this helps or adds to the confusion.
We put on an extremely light coating of high temp anti-seize. Seems to do the trick with all the mag wheels we have in our family.
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I just got to removing my snow tires after work today, and I had to snap a couple pics of what it looks like to heed the advice in my earlier post. I took the wheels off, was amazed at how incredibly good everything looked, immediately thought of this discussion, and snapped a couple pics. This is the metal condition after 6 months of driving at least 30 miles a day in the winter salt festival. The rotor pictured is a Centric 120 series that has been on the car for 9 months. I touched nothing before taking the pics.
The rim’s hub face looks the same as in the pics in my earlier post, which I took to illustrate a similar point in another thread active at that time. The 200k mile rims were crusty with rust when I cleaned them up to for mounting the snow tires last fall. I had recently bought the car, still haven’t had it a year yet.. When I took off the last lug nut off, the wheel just fell free on its own.
My god, why would anyone want to deal with another anti-seize mess over this? I also replaced the rear pads/rotors/calipers tonight. and the anti-seize that was on the caliper bracket bolts didn’t work. I had to fight them out and clean them up after because the fluid part of the anti-seize dried up as usual and left behind dry grains of sand, basically. I would love to have an anti-seize engineer explain to me the benefits of it vs. grease..
Unless you caked on the grease thick, I doubt you will have any problems.
Just maybe in a couple days, take a peek at the brake pads to see if there is evidence of grease collecting on them at the back edge of the pad. Just squat down and look thru the space between the mags of the wheels.given the small clearance between the pads and rotor, it is kind of hard for anything to work it’s way in. Plus if it were THAT likely for the pads to get grease infested, most cars would be in trouble considering how many nasty things the underside and brakes are subject to. Things like oil, grease, salt, rain, snow, brake dust, squirrel guts, some drunk college kid on Friday night pissing on the tires…
You would pretty much have to intentionally lubricate the rotors before any real braking problems would result.
So basically – no need to fret.
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