My Truck Started Smoking Yesterday

[maverickmk]

Driving home last night from the office and I got about 3 miles from the house and I saw smoke wafting out from under the driver side fender & smelled what appeared to be a scorched clutch Pulled over and found the caliper had failed. Limped it home and found this:

Of course that was after I let it cool. I literally burned some of my fingers when I tried to pull the wheel off after I removed the lug nuts. Never thought the wheel would get that hot - obviously

So, $200.00 later with a new caliper & rotor, here we are.

 

[Gastrick]

Yikes. What are those plungers made of?

 

[maverickmk]

It's bronze in color & cast.

 

[26Troadster]

i have heard of this happening on a lot of late model cars and trucks, glad you wasn't hurt.

 

[donsrods]

My Son had a Lincoln Town car and he started smelling smoke, so he pulled over to the side of the road. The wheel was on fire and he caught the grass on fire too. He had to take a container he had in the car and run down to a ditch that was down off the road and he kept dumping water on it until it went out. The grease on the suspension was fueling the fire.

Looks like you were almost at that point too. Good thing your suspension was so grease free.
Don

 

[Dirtyrat]

I wonder if the color is just from the high heat rather than actually being bronze.
Thats nuts that it actually broke apart

 

[maverickmk]

The piston breaking has me wondering if the break caused the caliper to fail, or did the heat from the failing caliper cause the piston to break [S

The chicken & the egg theory - kinda'

 

[butchman_3]

Full sized Fords

full sized 3/4 ton and 1 ton ford trucks are bad about the caliper guide bolts seizing up inside the caliper mounts and not allowing the caliper and pads to "release" from the rotor. same thing, ground my brakes down to steel and had the axle and bearings scorching hot. several hundred dollars later, both sides are new. but i see and hear of this happening all the time on newer cars now.