I have a 94 chey cavalier 3.1 I have changed the brake caliper and the brake hose on the passenger side.When I drive the car it pulls to the right very hard.Could it possibly be out of alignment again?

You changed the wrong side. If it pulls to the right, the left side is not working properly.


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Being way2old is why I need help from younger minds

Hey what do you mean by that?? The brake caliper and the hose was bad on the passenger side I replaced that. It was NOT bad on the driver side. When I took the car to test drive it the steering wheel was turning very hard to the right and I had a wheel alignment last year and it was not like that before the caliper and the hose was messed up. Any other suggestions would be very helpful.

To add: Brakes will generally pull to the cooler brake. If there's a failure of a hose or caliper keeping that brake hot it will grab better on the other side.

Also: When you find a problem on one side you should replace both sides as whatever caused a problem with one probably is lurking with the other,

T
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Tom Greenleaf - MetroWest, Boston
http://acsource.net/acforum/index.php

If you have replaced the caliper and hose on the right side, the right side of the brakes are working better than the left side. The left side brake is not working as effectively as the right therefore giving you a pull to the right. Does it pull all the time or just when braking? Before you get all upset, we need all the information we can get to help you as much as we can. Remember, we do not have the car here or the ability to test drive it.


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Being way2old is why I need help from younger minds

it pulls all of the time,not just when I brake.

Is the caliper sliding freely on the right side? If not, that can cause a constant pull. Remember we can not drive it so we can not tell if it is a hard pull or a slight drift.

We will check the caliper thanks.Question? I had the car on some cinder blocks and the car lost balance and fell Do you think that when that happened it could have knocked the alignment off? Do you think maybe the caliper could be too tight to make it pull? Thanks for anybody's help!

If it fell off blocks and hit part of the streering and bent a linkage or control arm, yes the alignment could be off due to this.


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Being way2old is why I need help from younger minds

I think that I found the problem.The piston on the caliper on the passenger side was pushing against the rotor.It was acting like it was braking.I am going to bleed the brakes agin in the morning and then drive it again to see what happens.

One: Don't use cinder blocks! Jack stands on secure surface is best. Wood would be a better choice if you must use other than a jack stand.

Before bleeding the brake with car in neutral spin the side that drags. Then just release some brake fluid pressure from the bleeder and see if it frees up. If it does the pressure is not returning which is a common problem with the brake hose but could be the caliper or a metal line that is damaged. Never saw a problem with new parts but there's always a first.

What do you mean the piston is hitting the rotor?? Piston should be pushing on a disc pad first or this is AFU'd,

T
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Tom Greenleaf - MetroWest, Boston
http://acsource.net/acforum/index.php

the piston was pushing the brake pad against the rotor and it was dragging.soI took them back off and I pushed the piston back in with a c-clamp.I put everything back togather and it is spinning freely now.I am fixing to go outside and bleed the brakes to see if that fixed it.

OK I got the brakes fixed and I went to go test drive it down the road. I got a quarter of a mile and the car just completely shut off. I have a brand new battery and just had the alternator changed on it. It won't do anything not even turn over and nothing comes on the battery light or anything. We end up pushing my car with my wife's car to get it home we dont live far from where it broke down at. Do you have any suggestions to what could cause this? We have bought a lot of parts for this car already so we know it can't be the alternator or the battery. I know one thing this car has been nothing but troubule it's a chevy lol! this is the first chev it will be last!

I have another question around Christmas of last year my car got broke into and they stole a lot of electronics like my cd player ok Do you think maybe they cut a wire that was touching either the battery or the alternator? I need someone to help me with this. I need some advice on what I need to check anybody out there please HELP! Thanks!!!!!!!!!!

Obviously you need to get this running again even to see if your brakes are ok. New alt and bat doesn't rule them out. Carefully jump start this car. It may have a hard short in battery or alternator and if it reacts badly just making your last hook up with cables stop there. It's best to use a jumper box instead of another car if at all possible.

The battery may have a connection problem or the alternator itself. One can take out the other.

It's hard to say what may have happened when the car was broken into and what may have been damaged from here. I would think problems would have showed up right away from that so this is problably something new.

You should check for voltage at the battery and if you find none it may be fried.

It's just handy in general to own a battery charger, voltmeter or multimeter, and simple test light for all kinds of things.

See what you can find on that.

I don't think you are done with the brakes unfortunatley and they may have frozen or sticky pins etc that allow the caliper to release the brake pads,

T
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Tom Greenleaf - MetroWest, Boston
http://acsource.net/acforum/index.php

Ok we are going to check everything we put the new battery on a charger this morning. Ever since the car got broken into we been having troubule with the cranking part. We have already replace the alternator three times and the battery we just got last week. Yes we have a test light and we will check every wire and everything we need to test. The brakes on the car is fine now that is why I drove the car yesterday to test drive it. It just completly shut off and would not do anything. There is nothing wrong with the brakes they are fixed. It seems like their is something that is causing either the alternator or the battery to go bad have any suggestions to what that could be? I have checked all the wires behind where the cd player was but everything looked fine. I am going to check all that again. We have had it with this car. I hope those thieves end up in jail because what ever they have done they have ruined my car.

You must be ready to go bungee jumping without the bungee!!

With the battery etc: Put your test light between neg post of battery and the disconnected cable with everything off - doors closed, hood light disconnected and the test light should stay off. If it lights there's a short. Just to test that you did that right open a door and watch the test light light up. If there is a short hit back and we can talk about how to find that.

Now with battery charged just take its voltage reading. Should be 12-12.2 -- then start the car and read the voltage. It should read over 13.5 to perhaps 14.5 or so but not much higher. Now turn on all lights, blower, RW defroster and look at the voltage. It must stay above 13.5 now but may have dropped some from with everything off. That should mean the alternator can put out the amps the car needs. If getting a muli-meter is a finacial problem they have a real cheap one at Wal-Mart for under ten bucks but don't expect much. It works but is cheap and the volts scale is hard to pin point the exact # but good enough. It's the size of a pack of cigarettes and you get what you pay for with that one. I've seen them for a little more at other places and real good stuff goes on up in price but you really don't need to go wild.

If you can catch the car totally dead again test between connections at battery to see if the battery has voltage but not the cable and right along with both cables. OHM meter on multimeter can do that or just test light if hooked up right and hook a pos jumper to the test light's clip to test for ground. Grounds count just as much as pos current.

Hit back with results, I'm here,

T
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Tom Greenleaf - MetroWest, Boston
http://acsource.net/acforum/index.php

The battery is charged up we put it back in and test it with the light and the light came on. Now what do we need to do? Thanks!

Now get the voltage readings. Three are useful.... engine off, while cranking, and while running. Give it a load on electrical items like I said and it should hold. Then there's a mystery as to why it did that to you and you have to check out all connections and do the test for a short,

T
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Tom Greenleaf - MetroWest, Boston
http://acsource.net/acforum/index.php

So what you are saying he has to check anything electrical ? Anything else

Take the observations and start the car. What does it do or not do?

T
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Tom Greenleaf - MetroWest, Boston
http://acsource.net/acforum/index.php

Hey ok we will do that when he gets home hopefully we will find something out. Tom you have been a really big help and we do thank you for trying to help us deal with this. We don't have the money to take it somewhere so we are trying to do this ourselves. It's just been annoying for us to try to find out what has been causing this we had to replace the neutral safety switch a while back because when you put the car in reverse it shut off. It seems like we get one thing fix then it's something else nerver fails. I am glad he got the brakes fix bleeding them was a pain lol . We are going to check all the wires and everything that is electrical may take us all day but when you have nobody to help it's all on us.

Tom one more thing his abs light and parking light stays on . Do you know what causes that he said that his parking brake does not work. Is it possible that abs module could be bad or do you know???

The ABS light staying on means the ABS system is in it's default mode and will not do its ABS tricks in a skid. Regular braking should still be there as if it didn't have that feature. The problem could be a couple things. Since a brake piston was pushed back to make clearance the old brake fluid was pushed back thru some expensive ABS controls with old probably dirty brake fluid back to the master cylinder which can mess it up. Best to open bleeder when retracting a caliper piston and add new brake fluid when doing any work like that.

There are star wheels (things that sense wheel speed) at each wheel and they can get brake dust or dirt on them and fool the system and it will go to default mode. You can try blowing out the dirt with compressed air and see it that fixes it. With the parking brake not working (I think your rear brakes are regular drum brakes) there is brake dust that doesn't always get out by itself and that can be cleaned out. DON'T BREATHE BRAKE DUST!!

The back brakes are actuated by cable for the parking brake. If cables get sticky from rust they won't release well and can wear out back brakes fast or get real hot and cause problems there. Proper adjustment of back brakes that are in good condition usually gets the cables in range to work without adjusting the cable at an adjuster under the car.

When you said "parking light" stays on, did you mean there is a light just for the parking brake or a red light indicating "brake" which can be either parking brake is not in fully off position or a fluid pressure problem. Sometimes bleeding brakes or just one can set the warning off and it may just go away or you may have to very slowly bleed off some pressure on a rear wheel to center the sensor again. Just holding service brake and letting out some pressure to the rear (since front was bled) at the master cylinder will do. Hold pressure on the pedal and just loosen the brake line at the master a little to see some fluid come out while maintaining some pressure till light goes out (do this with engine running and light on) till the light goes out. If that is the same light - probably is for the parking brake the parking brake cables are more likely to be the problem. Sometimes just grabbing them from under the car and pulling on the cable can free it up for the time being. Make sure brake fluid is full at master cylinder as that can set off a light by itself if low. If the parking brake pedal or arm that you pull feels limp to return to off the cables are the problem almost always. Worry about RED warning lights right away and get to amber/yellow warning lights after any red ones are off and back to normal,

T
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Tom Greenleaf - MetroWest, Boston
http://acsource.net/acforum/index.php

Hey Tom back to the part about the car shutting off. Well we are going to get the alternator checked out and some guy at Advance said it could be the main wire harness to the car. He checked all the wires behind the cd player and everything with that is fine. We will let you know about the alternator when we get it checked for the third time.