Hello everybody. I just picked up a 2001 Dakota 4.7 as a fun project. It's got low miles and pretty clean besides for the rust. Anyways I noticed the front brakes to be dragging so I pulled em apart and saw there's no slide clips for the pads and caliper to slide on. Instead it's 2 arms off the steering knuckle that have been gouged. Why no slide clips? This is stupid. Does anyone make a stainless clips for these?

 

The brake sliders come with the pads. I've seen many times where someone THOUGHT they knew what they were doing and didn't. Them left them off because they didn't know what they were. When you get new pads, put the clips in and lubricate the slides with a tiny dab of brake grease. When I ran a shop, I specialized in brakes. I got a truck once that got new brakes and then they didn't work very well. The owners wife brought it in. He had done the brakes while consuming most of a six pack. He used most of a tube of synthetic brake grease to lube it. I've got a tube that is several years old and still is half full. The owner had greased the slide pin, the slide clips, so far so good, and then he lubed both rotors with grease.

 

hahahaha! Thanks. I'll go buy some new pads

 

OP may have a point. I may be wrong (I have an 03'), but I've always heard the pre 2003 Dak calipers were a horrible design and I don't recall there being any slider clips. The sliders were basically part of the knuckle and would become notched after a while, resulting in brake drag. 2003 and up, the caliper design was improved to dual piston caliper with the more common slide clips. Also the rear brakes went from drum to disc design, so a huge improvement overall. I believe some have upgraded to the new design but there are quite a few parts involved.

A quick search on youtube shows this guy resurfacing the slider surface which again, is horrible, cause how many times can you do that?


Old pic of mine, but here you can see the newer design with the slider clips in place (dirty but there). Ignore the arrows.

 

Thanks for that Dodgevity. I just resurfaced, greased and slapped em back together