Brake Caliper Sticking

99 Tacoma Sr5 4x4. ABS light on when I bought it about 3 years ago, 200k miles. Ran fine for maybe 15k miles. This spring the front right caliper started sticking. I took it to the dealership. They say ABS computer is bad and quote $1500. No thanks. I went home and took the front right caliper off. One of the 4 pistons was absolutely rusted, frozen stuck. I called the dealership service manager and let him know they screwed me on the labor I paid. I went home and took the ABS fuse out, replaced the caliper and pads on each side, flushed and replaced brake fluid. No problems for about 3 months. 3k miles.

It started sticking again. Replaced the brake hose and hard line (hard line nut was seized to the hose mount). Truck ran fine for another month or two.

This weekend on the interstate it starts shuddering again, had to stop a time or two to my destination it was so bad. Started shuddering really badly - hard, hard pedal. Got to my destination, truck sat about 30 minutes. Drove back home about 25 miles no problems. No hard pedal no shuddering.

What would you do if you were me? Thanks.

 

Honestly my truck ate aftermarket calipers. The lower onboard piston on all of them seized up within a year.

 

For the price, I ALWAYS replace the rotors when I do the front brakes. Maybe a warped/disfigured rotor?
You should have a lifetime replacement on those calipers, depending on where you bought them.

 

Can you show us some pictures?

 

That's the thing with buying a 17 year-old vehicle - no way to know if the previous owners kept up with brake fluid flushes every 4 years, or if they used the correct fluid.

Could be a mechanical blockage in the ABS module, sticking solenoid valve, etc. (which can still intermittently cause problems even if you cut power to the computer portion of the module).

The "legit" way to diagnose this, so you aren't blindly replacing parts, would be to reinstall the ABS fuse, wait for the ABS light to come on, pull codes with a scan tool, and maybe see some live data. You'll need a good scan tool that can talk with the ABS module.

 

The way you describe this, shuddering real bad with hard pedal and then change to nothing on same day, makes me lean towards something that could be intermittent. Like the a caliper piston sticking, like maybe the brake booster is acting up. I don't have abs but I had bad shuttering for embarrassingly long time, like 2 years, and the pads and rotors were warped/bad/worm out/etc. My shuttering while braking was completely resolved with the new rotors and pads.

 

Caliper piston sticking. Try stopping, backing up, hard stop. May break it loose enough to limp it home, or a shop to fix it. Feel the heat buildup at both front wheels. The hottest one has the bad caliper. Make arrangements to have it repaired/replaced asap. It's still stuck.

Do a brake fluid flush/refill. Sticking calipers can be caused by water condensing in the brake fluid, rusting the pistons/journals. This condition is worse if the truck lives in a high humidity environment, not driven much.
Every time the brake system is opened for whatever reason, moisture gets in. The master has a see-through reservoir so you don't have to open it to check the level, for this very reason.

 

Sounds like it could be a bad master cylinder. When you drive do you hear your brakes dragging at all? Sounds like a faint metal to metal scraping. Also check to see if your rotors are blue-ish. This would show that the rotors are getting too hot which is a sign of stuck calipers.
You can also try jacking up the truck and spinning the wheels. If they feel like they’re sticking due to the brakes try loosening the brake line to the caliper until you see fluid seeping out and spinning the wheel again. If it spins freely then it very well may be the master cylinder