So, my girlfriend has this pos 2003 sunfire, with 45k miles on it.
The front brakes were replaced, they are fine.
The rears I think are original.
When the car is cold, or it sat overnight, or got wet, the rear brakes will lockup and grind for the first few stops, then it will act totally fine the rest of the trip.
So everytime she takes the thing home from work or whatever, after it sat for 10 hours in the rain, it will grind like shit coming out of the work parking lot.
What should I look at replacing here, shoes and drums?
Its cheap enough to do everything…
What gets me is that the brakes work fine when they get warmed up…
The best idea would be to tear it apart and look. Are the rears disc or drums. I know ceramic pads will cause a grinding type noise when cold. They should not lock up though.
its probably full of brake dust, which almost immediately rusts when it gets wet/humid.
I would atleast pop the drums off and check out the thickness of the shoes. dump the dust out of the drum and hose off the shoes real good.
The drums are rusty as shit, i’ll hose it off and see how far I get with it.
Should I use any brake clean or just water?
I would brake clean Is fine.
be prepared to put new everything in, just incase. ya never know what you will find… shoes/springs are a pain in the ass, especially if you have never done it before
sounds like they’re actually working… which is strange for j-body drums in ny… when you pull them apart plan on taking a trip to the parts store for everything, IE: shoes, hardware, adjusters, and cylinders and possibly drum resurface, or replacement. if you know they’re in stock, the parts store is open, and you can afford the time and can do the job. you won’t need a thing, if any of the above is not true, you will need what they don’t have or you won’t be able to get what you need b/c it’s sunday. murphy’s law.
Check j-body.org , the problem you are having is common on cavaliers and sunfires. It happens when its wet or has been sitting and goes away once the friction material heats up and drys off. The best fix that i have found is to replace the shoes with ac/delco original equipment. heres a link to a similar problem and solution
http://www.j-body.org/forums/read.php?f=3&i=137580&t=137070
It’s a very real possibility that you’ll pull a drum off and everything inside will fall out into a pile on the ground. So, don’t decide to check them out when she needs the car in 15 minutes.
happens 9 out of 10 times on drum brakes… customers love that, but you can’t tell them that, they want their brakes inspected.
This used to happen all the time on my cavalier. I ended up chaning the drums and shoes and it solved the problem.