Hello Everyone,

I usually frequent the 3rd gen. truck forum, but I have a company provided 2006 bottom-of-the-line (hand window cranks) caravan for my work vehicle.
I do all of the PM stuff myself on this monster, so I decide to do a complete brake job around all four wheels.
Front brakes I can now do in my sleep since I go through about a set a year, but the drums I have never done before.
I did my research, and think that I did everything right. I even got new drums for each side. My problem is now I have a brake "shudder" if i'm above 35-40mph. It goes away under that speed, but it feels like it is going to shake apart.
I do not feel the vibration in the steering wheel, or the brake pedal itself. It feels like the drums are transfering the vibration to the suspension.
I know it is the drums because I did a test using only the e-brake while holding out the release, and the shudder is there.
The only thing I can think of now, is perhaps one of the new drums is out of round.
Any advice would be appreciated.
Jason

 

Where they "white box" economy drums? If so, I'd bet money they're out of round.

 

Thank you for the reply Rick,

They were purchased from my local NAPA store. They didn't offer me one of their "Premium" drums for the vehicle. They cost me about 60 bucks a pop. I just didn't know if it was a common issue to have a band new drum out of round.
I thought that perhaps I didn't lubricate something enough. I lubricated the auto-adjusters, the backing plate and the bottom pivot points for the shoes. The only thing I didn't lubricate is the inside of the drum itself where it looks like the shoes might make contact. Nothing I read said to put lubricant there, but I've never done this before.

 

You lubed the right places. Most autoparts stores offer two lines--an economy and a premium. If you can, remove the drums and take them back to NAPA. Ask them to "mic" them for you. That will tell right away if they're out of round. If they are, ask for N/c replacements. They should be guaranteed to be "in round" even if they're economy drums.

 

I will do that tonight. Thank you very much for your assistance.

 

Hi, I have an 06 caravan brake problem that the local mechanics over here can't solve. So I am in need of some car detective work.

Several months ago, I started to feel a bit of shaking during braking. The van was about 50k miles at the time. I took it to my mechanic, who I had only good experiences with before. He told me that all four of my brakes were in very bad shape, worn, warped with some rust damage to boot, and would need new pads and also rotors and drums all around.

So I said OK. When he returned it, I drove it and it would shake really bad when braking on the highway, so I took it back, and he took the back drums off and saw that the pads were being applied unevenly, due to wearing only on the top and not the bottom. So he said sometimes you get unlucky with the drums, and he replaced them again and said now it would be fine.

Well, it was better, but by no means fine. Still the same symptom, a shaking and vibration in the pedal (not the steering wheel) at highway speeds, less than the first time he fixed them, but more than before taking it in. And still definitely feeling like a brake problem. So I took it back and he said, OK, if you can get unlucky with parts once, you can get unlucky twice, so for good measure he replaced EVERYTHING again, front and back, with brand new parts. He gave it back to me, and it still had the same problem.

At that point I was pretty mad that he gave it back to me not fixed, and he said something like: "we have done 3000 brake jobs around here, I had my best guy on it, I have never seen anything like this, let me try one more time with OEM parts, which are more expensive and usually not really any better than the ones I use, but may do the trick for you." So he replaced everything front and back one more time with dealer parts. And the problem was still there, so he said he is out of ideas and gave me a refund, though only half because he was "sure" that the problem is in the back only and the front is fine. I was just glad to be rid of him and move on at this point.

So I took it to a second guy, told him the story and he test drove it with me, and he said, yes it definitely feels like a brake problem, and agreed it is the rear and not the front because it is in the pedal and not the steering wheel. But when he took the wheels off he said everything front and back looks like it was done properly and all the parts new and not worn yet. So he did some small adjustments which did not help, but he said beyond that he did not want to work on it because the only thing he could try is the same thing as the first guy, which hadn't worked before.

Both of them did not think it was the ABS modulator, I think because the problem is at high speeds.

Here are a couple more issues that they said are not related to the problem, but I don't know how they know that if they don't know what the problem is:

(1) The van shakes a bit at 45 mph and between 65-75 mph. Kind of feels like unbalanced tires in the back, though I had my tires balanced and alignment done recently.

(2) The van gets poor gas mileage, it is a v4 engine, and only gets about 300 miles on a fill-up, more highway than city, 17-18 gallons, which comes out to 17.5 mpg.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated, especially since it is the brakes and I don't really feel safe putting my kids in this van.