Ok,

I have an 01 Z06. The driver rear caliper appears to have been sticking open and it has worn the rear pads to the backing plates (and started to eat the rotor). When I took it apart the caliper would not let the piston retract at all, the piston looked like it was all the way out, and the rubber boot around the piston was melted about half way around on the side facing out.

Is this a common thing or do I have a bad caliper? The other side's pad shows about 60% wear and works fine...

Anyone else seen things like this?

Mike

 

Take it to uncle GM for repair! Have heard of it, but it should not happen....Hopefully they will fix it correctly and/or replace the parts affected. Good luck. :)

 

The melted boot is common if you do track events, although I have never had a C5 piston seize. If you can get the caliper apart, I would just check the seal, replace if necessary, and put it back together with new pads on go on. You can even but replacement pistons is your is warped or damaged (can happen if they get too hot).

You will probably come out much better than trying to convince the dealer that you weren't abusing the car.

Dave

 

Well,

I left the car at Huffines this morning. I think they'll do a warranty repair since the right side rar is in perfect shape and the left side rear is sticking and hosed up. Hopefully I am OK. I am going to get it back to stock condition, run one more event on the factory brakes and then yank em and replace em with some real brakes. Just tired of the weak brake system this car has.

Mike

 

Well,

In Typical GM fashion the "GM service rep" claimed that using the brakes on a track voids any claim GM might make on quality control or safety... How so? Maybe I should get a copy of that warranty aggreement...

OK, I'd agree with them if it was both caliper's on both sides but it was one out of four caliper's that failed... Sad company General Motors. This is clearly a case of a part failing to work as expected, and not a wear and tear issue from racing. I have tracked many other cars a lot harder than the Vette and never had a caliper fail or melt its dust boot...

The car is pretty good, but brakes are a #1 essential item, and they shouldn't be failing in this way on a car which is essentially new, no matter what you do to them. I guess I will be replacing the brakes system and thinking about how I should have bought a car from a company that knows something about customer service... Boy the M3 is looking mighty good right now.

 

Did your caliper make any rattle noises with this problem?

 

Mike,
I would look into that warranty call some more, was it the GM rep or the dealer mechanic trying to get a better paycheck. When I first took my 97 to the track it had 2000 miles on it. When I experienced the low brake pedal problem for the first time I went to the dealer the following day and told them what I had been doing and what happened. They replaced the brake pads on all 4 wheels under the warranty and solved the problem. Later that year when I had 4000 miles on the car and had just finished another two days at the track I took it back because the left rear tire was wearing out. They took a look at the alignment and warrantied both rear tires. They looked past the track driving to the unusual wear pattern and made the call. What surprised me is that they also replaced the right side even when I thought it was worn but OK.
Bill

 

Well,

I am not sure who at the dealership made the call. My take is they drove my car 6 miles and never even looked at the caliper (I marked the bolts with a magic marker to check and see if they took either out. They did not. So much for GM service. They probably went out to lunch in my car too.

I ended up buying a new rear rotor and brake pads (total cost $130) and yanking the caliper off and fixing it myself (it was jammed up with melted dust boot as I suspected). Overall I am happy parts are so cheap, and that the car is so easy to work on, just not happy GM is so cheap. I mean come on a melted dust boot? That's just crappy quality in a place that can't possibly save them any significant money. I have not seen this on any other car.

I got a "how was your service call" yesterday and I told them I was dissapointed that GM would not back up their product, and that their service folks did not even look at the problem closely, drove my car with a failing brake system on the street for 6 miles (without my consent) and then told me they wouldn't fix it. If it were a high dollar item that failed for no real reason other than design/manufacturing/assembly flaw (motor or transmission) I would have considered seeking legal mediation.

Wow GM really doesn't want customers... If and when I sell the Vette I won't be going back to the General if this is the service I can expect. I am impressed with the car overall, but even at the price I paid (which was really low for a new Z06) I expect some decent service. It should be part of the business of selling cars, and a car company should be bending over backwards to fix everything just to keep customers happy and coming back. GM's dealerships seem to be clueless about this simple fact. Sure they save $130 dollars on a warranty repair, but they lose $50000 over the next ten years from someone who won't go back and buy their products ever again.

That's pretty smart.

 

Sorry to hear that your Z06 and GM's service aren't meeting your expectations.

But I think you're asking a bit too much in regard to brakes. The Z06 is a *really* fast car and extremely hard on the brakes. You drove it hard on the track, right? Drive it like a race car, maintain it like a race car. There's no escaping that.

I know guys who would *never* drive a stock 'vette on a serious road course until they'd first rebuilt the brakes themselves. An L98 maybe.. But a Z06? Too fast! One of your pistons stuck? Some folks would say you should have checked them before you risked your life and car at the track.

It's just like checking the torque on every important fastener on the car. I'll be doing that on my Z06 because I can't blame the folks in BG if I lose a wheel at 150 mph because something was simply loose.

Quite a number of good people have died in turn 1 at Grattan. You can argue about warranties all you want, but at the end of the day you are entirely responsible for the condition of the car when you hit the track.

The pistons in those calipers are aluminum. They should be stainless. I can think of only one reason GM did that: You have to replace them to have good brakes at the track.

On a road course, tires and brakes are both consumables. The entry fee for the weekend is a small cost when compared to brakes and tires. I paid $240 for my last set of 93 compound Performance Friction pads for my track car (just for the fronts).

I run my track car *really* hard. But for every hour on the track, I spend many hours in the garage. That helps get me reliability at the events, but it also keeps the car from failing at 160 mph..

I have had the dust boots burn off of every car I've ever open tracked. It is expected when you run sticky tires and race pads. The rotors *GLOW* from the heat.

It does sound like you had an issue with that caliper. And you might have noticed it given more street driving. But once you hit the track it became your problem.

That's silly.

I can warp any production brakes simply by doing a panic stop from 150 without warming them up first. Would that be the mfgrs fault or mine? Try that on an M3 and let us know how much the new rotors cost ;)

There's a real four seat race car for you ;)

Someone else wrote:You're fortunate that you have a dealer who will allow the General and the rest of their customers to support your track habit!
A road course with lots of right hand turns will naturally wear out the left side tires.

But if they hadn't driven the car, would you have said "they didn't even drive it!"?

My guess.. They looked at the wear on the front pads or maybe felt some rotor warpage. I'd bet that your front dust boots are discolored. The mechanic probably saw that - you just can't hide it once they've been used hard at the track. Or maybe there was fine cracking in the rotors. You can usually tell by visual inspectation when brakes have been HOT.

Just hope that they didn't black mark your warranty!

Please show me a car with fireproof dustboots..

The warranty costs at Ford and GM are *billions* per year. Those costs are a huge factor on whether they turn a profit. They cannot afford to finance my track habit or anyone else's.

If you're going to continue tracking the car, I strongly recommend you check out Carroll Smith's outstanding series of books on race car preparation. It just isn't safe to rely on Bowling Green or your dealer mechanic to take care of these details for you. If you're not interested in doing the work yourself, try and find a good race mechanic to check your car over.

It's one thing to hit a couple of events. But if you're going to keep flogging the car, it will need frequent attention and TLC.