Mobil 1 Synthetic Grease on brake caliper pins?

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Is Mobil 1 Synthetic Grease ok to use on brake caliper pins.
Can't see to find any info on this. Maybe it is not compatible with the rubber guide pin boots?
 
I can't comment on the compatibility, but there are better choices. This grease will not withstand washout during the (on average) three years service it'll see.

Use a silicone-based lube. Silicone has excellent high temp resistance, extremely resistant to washout, and is completely compatible with the boots.
 
I would say as long as it is high heat tolerating, then you're fine.

I use bearing grease on my caliper pins simply because that's the grease I have out when I'm doing a brake job.
 
I would use CRC synthetic Brake and caliper grease in this app. It clearly states that it is compatible with rubber components in brake environment and is recommended for caliper pins along with all other brake parts. Not doubting the Mobil 1 wouldnt work, just that the CRC is a proven product that is specifically made for brake components.
 
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I know there are some posters here who claimed to be ok with Mobil-1 syn grease on guide pins/boots but I personally would not recommend that (been servicing cars for over a decade, with hundreds of cars still on the road). my take is to go with proper, rubber-compatible brake caliper grease that would not disintegrate the elastomeric materials.

CRC, permatex, etc. are good ones.

I use sylglide for the past 18+yrs in the field, incl. all my cars with my family so far. Works all the time.

Q.

p.s. stay away from ordinary bearing grease of all sorts for they will swell and deterioriate your rubber dust boots/moisture boots on the guide pins and such and w/o you knowing it, as it rips and moisture seeps in, it will seize your calipers.
 
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If you're not doing alot of brake jobs it doesn't justify buying a 10 or 20 dollar bottle of the stuff at least buy a single use pack of the stuff. Most parts stores have a box of the stuff on the parts sales counter. I've worked on cars for about 20 years and have seen fisrt hand 4-6 year old cars with rotted boots with what looked like a little bit of bearing grease left on the end of the usually partialy or totally seized guide pin.
 
What exactly makes special caliper grease different from bearing grease?



I guess I've got some work to do this weekend, then.
 
Originally Posted By: Reddy45
What exactly makes special caliper grease different from bearing grease?



I guess I've got some work to do this weekend, then.


Caliper grease are formulated with the following characteristics:

- ideally, it shall not/will not swell or deterioriate rubber/elastomeric components such as rubber bushings, rubber dust boot (moisture seals), etc.

-it is somewhat resistant to washouts.

-it can handle a wide range of operating temperature

-it lubricates under pressure (guide pins experienced a lot of side pressures when you hit the brakes)


******************************************************

While you may claim that bearing grease possesses most of these said characteristics. You have to understand, however, that almost all bearing grease will cause significant swelling to those rubber bushings and moisture seals/dust boots, and will eventually(inevitably) cause them to disintegrate and moisture and dirt will get in and ruin everything.

Yes, most mechs I knew "cheapen" out by not investing on proper grease (either mal-informed or simply cheep/lazy) and all their work with ordinary bearing grease will eventually all come back due to seized calipers.

Q.
 
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You can buy a 4 oz tube of Sil-Glyde at NAPA for $5 or so. I am, partial to it for things like caliper pins because I had it out as assembly lube for the new O-rings and seals I put in the caliper. I use it on anything rubber I put together including plumbing projects. Never a problem.

Many of the rubber parts on the outsides of brake parts will resist oil and conventional greases, but all of them will resist Sil-Glyde.
 
Originally Posted By: Quest
Originally Posted By: Reddy45
What exactly makes special caliper grease different from bearing grease?



I guess I've got some work to do this weekend, then.


Caliper grease are formulated with the following characteristics:

- ideally, it shall not/will not swell or deterioriate rubber/elastomeric components such as rubber bushings, rubber dust boot (moisture seals), etc.

-it is somewhat resistant to washouts.

-it can handle a wide range of operating temperature

-it lubricates under pressure (guide pins experienced a lot of side pressures when you hit the brakes)


******************************************************

While you may claim that bearing grease possesses most of these said characteristics. You have to understand, however, that almost all bearing grease will cause significant swelling to those rubber bushings and moisture seals/dust boots, and will eventually(inevitably) cause them to disintegrate and moisture and dirt will get in and ruin everything.

Yes, most mechs I knew "cheapen" out by not investing on proper grease (either mal-informed or simply cheep/lazy) and all their work with ordinary bearing grease will eventually all come back due to seized calipers.

Q.



My original post was baseless, and I appreciate the explanation. I actually did a brake job recently and did use bearing grease on the caliper pins. It has been a week so far and nothing has seized on me, but I'll be re-doing the caliper pins this weekend.

I actually went to ACDelco and picked up the CRC StaLube Synthetic Grease for under $6 for a tube that will probably last me 20 years.
 
Originally Posted By: Reddy45

My original post was baseless, and I appreciate the explanation. I actually did a brake job recently and did use bearing grease on the caliper pins. It has been a week so far and nothing has seized on me, but I'll be re-doing the caliper pins this weekend.

I actually went to ACDelco and picked up the CRC StaLube Synthetic Grease for under $6 for a tube that will probably last me 20 years.


Don't worry, if it doesn't happen to you (with bearing grease) in days/weeks, it will definitely happen to you in months and before you knew it, one faithful day (or an emergency/panic braking event) you'll realise what happened to your caliper.

Good luck.

Q.

p.s. please carefully clean out all the bearing grease in your caliper assembly and then either replace all the rubber components and lube it with CRC caliper lube, or if the original rubber components still holds, lube it with fresh new CRC cal lube.

If you chose to reuse the original (now somewhat contaminated with bearing grease) rubber components, do form a habit of checking on them every 6 months or so to see if they disintegrate (by squeezing/slightly stretching them while they are still on the car), replace them ASAP.
 
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Originally Posted By: Quest
Originally Posted By: Reddy45

My original post was baseless, and I appreciate the explanation. I actually did a brake job recently and did use bearing grease on the caliper pins. It has been a week so far and nothing has seized on me, but I'll be re-doing the caliper pins this weekend.

I actually went to ACDelco and picked up the CRC StaLube Synthetic Grease for under $6 for a tube that will probably last me 20 years.


Don't worry, if it doesn't happen to you (with bearing grease) in days/weeks, it will definitely happen to you in months and before you knew it, one faithful day (or an emergency/panic braking event) you'll realise what happened to your caliper.

Good luck.

Q.

p.s. please carefully clean out all the bearing grease in your caliper assembly and then either replace all the rubber components and lube it with CRC caliper lube, or if the original rubber components still holds, lube it with fresh new CRC cal lube.

If you chose to reuse the original (now somewhat contaminated with bearing grease) rubber components, do form a habit of checking on them every 6 months or so to see if they disintegrate (by squeezing/slightly stretching them while they are still on the car), replace them ASAP.




I actually did the job tonight after work. I'm glad I did too because one of the driver's side caliper pins was almost "glued" to the rubber flange because of the bearing grease.

I basically cleaned out the caliper pin holes really well with solvent and q-tips, and then dried them out. I used clean towels to clean the rubber flanges since I did not want to risk using solvent on them.

Then, I used the synthetic CRC grease and filled the inside of the flanges, and then put some on the pins and worked them into the holes until they started to form that "vacuum" effect.

Finished the job, went inside for a few and then took it out for a test drive. OBVIOUS difference. Before, it felt like the brake pedal had an early "engagement point" before it went full-on brake, but now it's basically very smooth from little pressure to hard pressure. Very controllable. Oddly, I found out that my brake lights still work when the truck is not even turned on.

Thanks Quest. I'd be screwed if you hadn't posted up the warning about bearing grease.
 
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Originally Posted By: Dan55
Silglyde is good but this is supposed to be better http://www.permatex.com/products/Automot...s_Lubricant.htm I just started using it.



Dan55, don't always believe the marketing hype. The key word in your post is "supposed". I bought into the ceramic craze and tried the Bendix Ceram lube: http://www.autobarn.net/bl1.html

After 18 months, my Ceram lube dried up into a hard paste, resulting in binding calipers. Another member here (Tempest???) has had good luck with it, so maybe there is something wrong in my system. I tried the Permatex this time and will report back. If it doesn't work, I may revert back to the Silglyde I used years back. I'm addicted to trying the "new stuff".
 
I've had Ceramlub on my brakes pushing up on 3 years now with no problems. About 18 months on another.

I ran a blob of this stuff under hot running water on a piece of metal. It plated out in all directions to a given thickness and then totally ignored the water after that.

Sorry to here you are not having good luck with it. Remember that this is ~40% solids and it is not supposed to stay wet.
 
Notice the locations of the Ceramlub users. The guy in Michigan(wet) has no luck and the guy in Nevada(dry) does.
 
We switched from the pink colored Ceramlub to the dark gray/black stuff at the shop I work at because the pink stuff was "gumming up". The dark colored stuff seem to be working fine to this point. The shop is located in Seattle by the way. Anyone ever use Wurth Ni2400 (nickel based) or copper based anti-seize on caliper pins/slides?
 
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