S60 Brakes: Brake problems

[Joe Harding]

Unlikely to be the cause but check your pads have gone in square. I had what I thought was a warped disc but found it was the outboard pad not meeting the disc squarely.

[Michaelvd1234]

Originally Posted by barrybritcher

on the pre facelift the brake pad retaining springs is like a wire. (thin)

its very easy to fit this incorrectly and can cause this sort of symptom

ill post a link

Thank you for the reply. I am pretty sure I installed the springs correctly but I will check them again today as soon as I get home.

[Michaelvd1234]

Originally Posted by Joe Harding

Unlikely to be the cause but check your pads have gone in square. I had what I thought was a warped disc but found it was the outboard pad not meeting the disc squarely.

What exactly do you mean by the pads going in squarely? Thanks for the suggestion btw.

[Carlosos]

Originally Posted by Michaelvd1234

What exactly do you mean by the pads going in squarely? Thanks for the suggestion btw.

I put new callipers on my old focus and all looked well but they wouldn’t operate correctly and I couldn’t work it out. I took it to my mechanic and he couldn’t see it at first but when he compared the two new front callipers one of them hadn’t been machined 100% and the pad wouldn’t sit square. It was a very minor imperfection but it caused the pad to not sit correctly and so one side of the pads wouldn’t touch properly.

Maybe they arnt quite sitting as they should. I’ve also heard a few stories about old spring clips letting the pad off the disk to much making the brakes feel ****e.

[wynnj]

You say you changed the brake fluid; any chance you got air in the ABS valves control? I believe you can actuate the ABS valves whilst brake bleeding with an appropriate Scanner /VidaDice??.
Alternatively find a clear open space where you can do no harm to yourself or anyone or anything else and brake hard to actuate the ABS. This should expel any air that might be trapped. Just a suggestion!
One other thing I discovered recently when replacing all the flexible hoses on my S60, although they were Volvo OE the outer rear pads on each side weren't running easily in the slots in the carriers; they seemed to be about 1mm too long compared to the inner pads ( ie the ones with the clip that goes into the piston. I'd suspected something was amiss as the rear disks (rotors) weren't all bright and shiny, even though they passed the Mot (annual safety check). I didn't have any pulsing or other feedback through the brakes or the car but wouldn't expect much as most of the braking effort is on the fronts. However, I could imagine some strange effects if something similar was happening on the fronts.

[Michaelvd1234]

Originally Posted by wynnj

You say you changed the brake fluid; any chance you got air in the ABS valves control? I believe you can actuate the ABS valves whilst brake bleeding with an appropriate Scanner /VidaDice??.
Alternatively find a clear open space where you can't do no harm to yourself or anyone or anything else and brake hard to actuate the ABS. This should expel any air that might be trapped. Just a suggestion!
One other thing I discovered recently when replacing all the flexible hoses on my S60, although they were Volvo OE the outer rear pads on each side weren't running easily in the slots in the carriers; they seemed to be about 1mm too long compared to the inner pads ( ie the ones with the clip that goes into the piston. I'd suspected something was amiss as the rear disks (rotors) weren't all bright and shiny, even though they passed the Mot (annual safety check). I didn't have any pulsing or other feedback through the brakes or the car but wouldn't expect much as most of the braking effort is on the fronts. However, I could imagine some strange effects if something similar was happening on the fronts.

I will try the hard braking to see what happens! I have been very cautious not to get air in the system while I was flushing the brake fluid but maybe I did something wrong and air somehow got trapped in the system. I'll check out my front pads again too, I have to open everything up again on the front anyways since I unfortunately damaged a driveshaft seal while doing the suspension work which is causing a tiny amount of gear oil to leak out..

[Joe Harding]

Originally Posted by Michaelvd1234

What exactly do you mean by the pads going in squarely? Thanks for the suggestion btw.

What happened with our wheel was that the brake overheated. On inspection a third of the disc closest the axle was pitted by overheating. The remaining two thirds was untouched so I surmised that the disc was only making contact at the bottom and therefore the likely cause was that the pad was at an angle. I can’t verify my theory as I changed the disc to be on the safe side and since then apart from the odd squeak we have had no further issues.

[Michaelvd1234]

I decided to open up the front and rear brakes today. What I found was that the calipers are pretty sticky (hard to move, especially around the fully compressed area, where it pretty much sits when new pads are installed). I haven't noticed any overheating brakes or certain brakes being hotter than the others, but I decided that I will be replacing the calipers both front and rear starting with the front soon. I hope this will fix the issue but they look bad and ready to be replaced anyway. I really do hope that it hasn't destroyed my pads and rotors though since I'm on my second pairs of pads and rotors in about a year.. I'll report back if anything has changed/fixed the issue

[Joe Harding]

A useful check is to take the car out on a quiet road and coast to a standstill without touching the brakes. Jump out and dab your finger on each brake rotor. Any that are hot are obviously suffering from a bad caliper.

[Michaelvd1234]

Sorry for reviving this old thread but my findings might help someone suffering from the same problems

I took my S60 in for an alignment. The front toe was quite a bit off, but the alignment did not fix the issue.

While I was bored I decided to take my front rotors out yet again and noticed that the pads were somewhat imprinted on the rotors. Also, the front left rotor had some sort of "drips" or "pits" (not entirely sure what to call them, but it looked like something left a few drips on the rotor and it started to rust in those particular spots) on the inside friction surface area. So after a lot of thinking I decided to go for another set of rotors and pads. TRW this time. I cleaned the front caliper pistons as much as I could, cleaned the guide pins and the rubber guide pin boots and greased everything up properly. Cleaned the hub surface, applied a light coat of copper grease on the hub surface and put everything back together. I don't want to celebrate just yet, but I am carefully happy to report that everything seems to be working as it should!! I have no idea what happened to my past 2 sets of rotors but the problem definitely seems to have been the front rotors themselves.

I just really hope the problem is gone for good now, it has been driving me absolutely insane. I hope this thread might help someone facing the same problems in the future. And this is what made me go for the TRW rotors and pads: the non friction areas are coated with a layer of black paint, which makes them look great! And the pads have a ventilation/dust slot in the middle, which the other ones I tried did not have.

And I nearly forgot to mention; I did an entire brake fluid flush again too. Don't think this had anything to do with the issue but it's worth mentioning.