Does anyone make stainless front caliper guide pins?

I don’t put a lot of miles on my Tacoma, I’m about to put the 3rd set of front brakes on my truck in 43000 miles. Each time the failure was mainly due to the pins rusting and hanging up the pads. If these were stainless, my life would be much better.

Has anyone seen these in stainless?

 

Try lots of copper antiseize next time. Even then its worth taking a quick wire brush to them every time you rotate the tires as part of normal maintenance.

I suppose you could look into making your own out of some solid stainless rod, if you were so inclined.

 

These aren’t yours , just an example.

https://www.probolt-usa.com/stainless-steel-brake-caliper-pad-pin-lsspinbp001/

they may make yours if sent an original

 

I do have a very talented machinist friend, I could probably have him make some if I can’t find any. I’d also have to research the metallurgy as to whether cast and stainless play well together since these go thru the cast caliper.

 

Take a look at this: https://trianglefastener.com/conten... compatibilty chart technical information.pdf

You could use 304SS that has not been passivated.

 

For the cost. I simply replace them every time I rotate my tires. That's about twice a year for me in the high salt corosive state of New York.

 

That’s a good suggestion. My truck is a 14 and it has 43k on it, that’s less than 5k per year. I haven’t had to get a Pa emission test for 3 years. My tires only get rotated every 1-2 years. My 2 Camrys on the other hand, get the wheels driven off of them.

 

I don't know what the spec HAS to be, but MAYBE it has to do with the fact that (as far as I know) you can't harden stainless steel as much as standard steel. I THINK steel can be hardened up to 745 brinell (68 HRC), but stainless can only be hardened up to about 500 brinell (about 53 HRC)? I know pins seem innocuous since they only serve the purpose of "sliding," but perhaps they take a lot of stress in the horizontal plane in hard braking situations?

 

Since these are non-floating calipers, they aren't guide pins and don't take any braking loads. They're just retention pins to prevent the pad from floating outwards and hitting the wheel rim. You can try substituting them with long SS cotter pins like on Wilwood calipers:

 

Don't fixed calipers have pistons on both sides (as opposed to floating calipers that only have piston(s) on one side with the other side "floating")?

 

I guess I was looking at the pics for the wrong caliper (X-Runner).

 

From what little I know about metallurgy, I think that stainless has less shear strength that regular steel.

 

Doesn’t matter here. They’re only orienting pins that retain the position of the pads but take no load.

And yes, OEM Taco front brakes use fixed calipers with 4 pistons (2 on each side of the rotor.

 

why not just put a really good grease on them

maybe clean and regrease maintenance as needed if you have the wheels off for a rotate and notice them dried out

 

The grease attracts all sorts of crud tho. Pretty sure OEMs don’t grease them.

 

OEM doesn’t put a proper TOB either

pros generally grease

they sell brake grease
Parts kits usually come with packets

 

They come with what looks like a cadmium coating but they fail without notice. On a vehicle like mine that gets less than 5k/year, they can go bad and I won’t notice till it’s too late.

 

2x

I do this and haven't had any issues. 13 year old truck in Canada, where the roads get salted.

 

The design sucks - they could at least put some "accordion" rubber boots or covers on them. When those boots are filled with caliper grease, the pins don't hang-up for years. The part would probably cost Toyota a nickel a truck....

 

Dodge uses that design. They still fill up with moisture and other crap, trust me