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Ford Explorer Community - Maintenance - Modifications - Performance Upgrades - Problem Solving - Off-Road - Street
Explorer Forum Covers the Explorer ST, Explorer Sport, Explorer Sport Trac, Lincoln Aviator, Mercury Mountaineer, Mazda Navajo, Ford Ranger, Mazda Pickups, and the Ford Aerostar
Put on new Brembo rotors and Hawk pads yesterday and immediately afterward the car brakes (an 02 with 31K miles) started letting go (sinking pedal, chink chink sound) from 10MPH & down.
I noticed that on one of the rotors I could turn the exciter ring on the back of the rotor. Is this normal? I suppose that it locks up when you press the rotor on the spindle, but it is kinda depressing to get to the end of a several hour job with expensive parts and have the brakes not work right.
Just so nobody else has to go through this, I'm going to write up what I found. Given that everything else but the rotors / pads were fine before I put on the Brembos / Hawks, I sort of guessed that the ABS sensors didn't like the Brembo rotors. Much to my chagrin, I went out and shelled out another couple of hundred for the upgraded Wagners. These are the things I noticed:
Same number of slots in the two exciter rings (54 I think)
Exciter ring was of a different material and a different color (Wagner Black like the OEM and the Brembo silver).
Exciter ring on one of the Brembos could be turned easily. As I've found out, this is a defect. I should have known better.
The Wagner sits slightly closer to the ABS sensor than the Brembo for some reason. It was enough that it was noticable on the spindle.
I also cleaned the surface of both front ABS sensors during the reassembly. They both had the normal road grime on them.
For some reason, the sensors just didn't like the fit of the Brembos. I never went fast enough for the freewheeling Brembo exciter wheel to be a factor. Only upside to all this mess is that I can now do the front brake job on this particular truck in less than 2 hours (not including the bearing service I'd have to do if they had still been dirty).
