'99 Ranger front calipers. . .going bad???

[atomicjoe23]

I have just aquired a '99 Ranger 4x4 (extended cab, 4.0 V6/manual tranny) and I just put new tires on it. . .I've been driving it with the new tires for about 2 weeks now and this morning when I left the house I noticed that the engine seemed to be bogging down, the brakes felt different than normal, and I had to stay on the gas more to stay at speed. . .

. . .when I got where I was going I checked the front and rear brakes to see if either of them were hot. The fronts were a little warm, but not hot. . .so I wasn't sure what was up.

Now that I'm home I jacked the truck up, removed the front wheel and see that the pad is squeezing against the caliper. . .I pulled the caliper (the pads are practically new) and pressed the pad back into the caliper so that the front wheel freely rotates again.

My question is. . .when the calipers on a Ranger fail do they act like a check valve and prevent the pad from retracting back into the caliper when the pedal is realeased???

I have a '94 Jeep Wrangler and when the calipers go bad on the Wranglers that is what happens. . .it's happened to me once and when they failed, the FAILED. . .nearly locked the brakes up and man they got HOT!!! trashed a new set of pads and I had to bleed all of the old fluid out of the system because it boiled the fluid in the MC. . .

. . .anyway, wondering if maybe the MC was just a little too full to allow room for the fluid to return to the MC (it was a little fuller than I would have filled it when I checked, I sucked a little brake fluid out so there would be room for fluid without overflow when I pressed the pad back into the caliper) or if the calipers are going bad?

Thanks for the help!

 

[atomicjoe23]

Just finished checking the driver side and it was dragging too. . .not as bad, but I still had to work to get the caliper/pad off of the rotor. . .pressed the pad back into the caliper and I will see if it fixes the problem if it comes back. . .if it comes back I guess I'm buying new calipers.

 

[atomicjoe23]

No help on this one. . .surely one of you guys have experienced and know if this is an indicator of the calipers going bad. . .there are ~140,000 miles on the truck if that helps at all.

. . .I think it is they were good for about 12 miles into work today and then they started to drag again. . .thinking I'm gonna be picking up new calipers on the way home, hopefully it isn't a waste of money

 

[modelageek]

No help on this one. . .surely one of you guys have experienced and know if this is an indicator of the calipers going bad. . .there are ~140,000 miles on the truck if that helps at all.

. . .I think it is they were good for about 12 miles into work today and then they started to drag again. . .thinking I'm gonna be picking up new calipers on the way home, hopefully it isn't a waste of money

did you pull the pins and clean and lube them?

 

[atomicjoe23]

I'm gonna do that tomorrow. . .I pulled them, but I didn't lube them. They weren't dirty and they slid in and out freely so I didn't think it was necessary, but a little bit of lube is cheaper than new calipers ansd that will eliminate that as a potential cause.