Long story short, i had an 98 SC2, and my wife STILL has 2 SC2's (2001 & 2002), with her daily over 250K miles. Yesterday, we did the front brakes on her 2002 SC2, with 250K miles. New rotors, new pads, new pins, etc.

i have two questions for the community -

1- Has anyone ever found a fix , to stop the spindle from rusting and then warping the brake rotor? ( i tried some flap discs <grinding> followed with a coat of acid etch primer for now. i also put a thin layer of bronze anti-seize between the new brake disc rotor, and the now smooth spindle. )( to really clean the spindle face , requires removing the studs )

2- this might be more of a GM question, but the front brake calipers on the 3gen SC2's use two differently brake caliper sized slide pins. One pin is metal on metal with rubber boot, and the other is a smaller/thinner pin which slides in a rubber sleeve. Her car had the smaller pin bent , which caused all kinds of problems. What i am looking to do, is toss the smaller slide pin AND its rubber guide, to be replaced with the same larger metal slide pin. This requires me to make some type of cover for the bracket as its normally pass through for the rubber insert. I would like to make BOTH caliper pins the LARGER sized ones, and to me, this should yield MUCH better brakes. i will post pictures but still waiting on a new set of brackets in the mail. Again, i will post pictures if anyone would like, and this is a cheap mod, that should yield MUCH better brakes. i plan to seal the end of the caliper slide hole, after smoothing its inside, and maybe even slight polish.

The smaller BRAKE CALIPER SLIDE PIN sitting in the rubber sleeve, has WAY too much deflection and bind. I have NEVER pulled a USED set of brake pads from ANY of our Saturn's that were evenly used. (some have been close) Does anyone know why GM used the rubber sleeve with a smaller slide pin for the brake caliper ? all i can think of, is comfort or softer pedal feel?

 

1) with over 500,000 mi on a 95 and 97 SC2, first and second gen respectively, I had my share of warped rotors, but there was never a positional repetitive warping at a particular corner of the car. Both vehicles have lived their lives in Wisconsin, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Rust rust rust. Don't know that I've ever had issues with rusty spindles affecting rotor warpage. Maybe I did and never realized it. So I can't help you with that one unfortunately.

I believe the Saturn brake calipers, which are a standard GM caliper design manufactured by GM, are the same on third gen cars as second and first gen, which both use the rubber sleeve and the larger other pin.

My brakes have always worn evenly or as close as evenly as might be expected. The inner always wears a bit more. That's just the way it works. I can see bending a pin being an issue.

I think the reason there is that much more play in the rubber boot with the smaller pin has to do with lubrication as well as absorbing impact. Putting a rubber sleeve with a closed back in there allows you to put a known amount of grease in with the pin and basically seal it in there. Having the pin outer diameter being significantly less than the bore gives you a little free play so the caliper is truly floating at all times if greased properly.

If you close up that gap, I would think the caliper would be more likely to bind if the force from the caliper piston is not perfectly even on the back of the inner pad. So the pin wouldn't bend anymore, but the caliper would probably hang up on them because there would be no play in the system to address when the caliper bracket gets slightly out of alignment with the rotor.

How did the caliper pin get bent, the one you spoke of?
If it was from lack of lubrication causing it to stick in place and then get bent by the caliper, that goes under user error/lack of maintenance. If it was lubricated properly but the larger pin hung up due to lack of lubrication causing the smaller one to bend, that also goes under user error. The pins in the calipers of my '95 to the best of my knowledge are all original. The surface may not be pretty but it is smooth as a baby's butt.

So I would not recommend putting a bigger pin in there. Pretty much every brake caliper setup I've ever seen has that same differential in caliper pins, so I think it must be for a very important reason. I would let it be.

Thoughts?