9496stang

I am new to the forums and just drove my 96 Cobra over 1200 miles from Michigan to Colorado without any problems at all. I get to the military base here and do some light driving around and notice that my breaks were locking up. I was about to stop to go into a store so I just dropped to a lower gear and drove it into a parking space. The front driver side break was still locked. I went into the store for an hour or so and had no problems with the brakes when came out. The next day I had about 30 miles to go on the highway when I noticed that the brake was locking again. I was in constuction and had nowhere to pull over and decided I could make it the 1.5 miles to the next exit. Big mistake! I pulled into a gas station and when I finally came to a complete stop I noticed a flame. I quickly put out the fire and had my car towed to the nearest dealership. I melted the brake hose as well as messed up the caliper and Rotor. The dealer only delt with trucks so after charging me $300 to replace the hose and refil the system and bleed it I decided to try to make it to my new place. I made it about 5 miles on the highway before this problem started again. I pulled off the road and waited and noticed that the pedal seemed stuck. Traffic was light so I tried to go about 15 mins later. The brake was still "locked" so I started pumping the pedal to see if this would do anything......it did. The break released and I drove the 30 or so miles home without any problems except the obvious weak breaking from a messed up rotor/caliper. Now for my question.......

1. What is causing this?!?!?!?!?

My ABS light is on but it is expected. I have a 8.8 rear axle off of a 96 GT and it does not have ABS so I knew the ABS would not work. I was under the impression that the ABS just shuts off if there is a problem so I doubt this is to blame. If it might be, can I just remove the ABS module? I am about to replace the caliper, rotor and pads on the the side that got messed up and was going to change the master cylinder as well. Does anyone with a bit more knowledge than me think this will take care of this? I actually don't know if the breaks are vaccum or hydraulic assisted so I figured I would just replace the master cylinder and see if that worked before getting into the other stuff.....what do you guys think? Thanks for any input. Sorry about the long post

ewgoetz

Sounds to me like the caliper is freezing up. When you take the wheel off see if it will slide side to side. either way if it got that hot there your gonna want to change that caliper to start. Glade the whole car didn't catch on fire that would of suked.

tspoon965

Another cause could be the flexible brake lines to the calipers. With age, they deteriorate inside, causing them to swell and not let the fluid return back from the caliper after you release the brake pedal. This keeps steady pressure on the brake caliper, resulting in excessive drag and heat build-up. If you check the calipers and they are good, try replacing the flex lines.

.boB

I could be wrong, But I think there are two ports on the MC, one for each front brake caliper. That means the problem could be in the MC. Since the the pedal didn't feel right, I suspect that's your problem.

When you replace the MC, use compressed air to blow out the lines. Make sure there's no O-ring shrapnel in there. Blow them out from the caliper end, towards the MC end.

Don't just replace the bad caliper, replace them both. Same with pads and hoses. You can probably resurface theunaffected rotor and call it good, but I'd replace it.

96dkgreengt

i had my brake caliper lock or something happened where u can hear it rubbing and it got really hot where the heat from it melted the clips on the center cap and it broke off...i changed caliper,pads,and rotors on the side and it still didnt fix it...this probably doesnt help any but just thought id say something like that somewhat happened to me to and ihave a 96gt..g/l with fixing it