should your wheels spin freely

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pandkh
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should your wheels spin freely

Post by pandkh »

Hi

In trying to resolve my buzzer of doom problem I just did my annual service. In addition to oil and filters, I lifted each wheel of the ground, spun it and shook it, left to right, top to bottom.

Two of the wheels spin freely, the other two do not. I'm guessing this Isn't normal.

Front near side, feels like the brakes are binding. Very stiff to turn wheel. I have girling sliding calipers. Can I undo the bottom caliper bolt to take a look? Haynes says to use a new bolt which I haven't got. Little throw away comments like that play havoc with the novice mechanic.

Rear off side turns freely but has grating noise at one particular point in the rotation. Not even going to try to get that big nut off. Had new cylinders and shoes 6 months ago. Top to bottom felt like there was more movement than there should have been. Any ideas on likely cause?

Probably going to take it somewhere but would like to be pre armed in case the try to cow dung me.

Thanks
1986 1.9 petrol water-cooled high top

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ghost123uk
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Re: should your wheels spin freely

Post by ghost123uk »

Sounds like you do have a calliper issue. Needs looking at asap I am afraid. Binding brakes cause lots of heat, which in turn causes them to bind more = viscous circle. Plus of course the real braking effect on that side will be reduced, imbalanced braking = van spinning round and round on emergency braking.

I'm not sure about re-using the bolt(s). Is it a special bolt? Anyone know for sure?



The rear however sounds much less bother. If it is only doing it at one point and makes a grating noise (rather than a rumbling noise) it is likely just the backplate making contact with the drum due to either it having a stone or other foreign object (a flake of rust is not uncommon) stuck in it. Mind you, you do mention one side has more "rock" then the other, so maybe the bearings are starting to fail, or that big nut is not as tight as it should be (450Nm :shock: )

Slight aside = iirc, these vans often fail mots on rear bearings when they shouldn't. I seem to recall it is due to the fact that they do have a tiny bit of "in / out" (lateral) movement as normal, but any "rock" beyond the slightest hint = bearing issues.
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Ajsmith123
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Re: should your wheels spin freely

Post by Ajsmith123 »

Hi
I am having a similar problem of a rubbing/grating noise coming from the rear. It sounds like it's coming from the rear suspension arm casing and when I remove the brake drums and spin the shaft through the suspension arm casing and hub I can hear rubbing coming from inside. has anyone ever come across this problem before. A bit of a mystery where and how it's rubbing. The suspension arm casings are brand new as are all the brake component parts.
If I push the CV shaft in towards the brake back plate it does seem to disappear so is it possible that the CV or the suspension casing is the wrong fit together.
I'm really puzzled by it and when driving it seems to get louder and louder to the point it's quite a profound graunching grinding noise
I'm mystified have tried allsorts

Any help would be massively appreciated.

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Aidan
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Re: should your wheels spin freely

Post by Aidan »

bolt can be reused but you need to clean off the old threadlock and apply fresh threadlock, the new bolt that should come in the pad kit has the threadlock (as a set paste) already applied, I don't know if the aftermarket pad sets come with a new bolt but the original VW sets did; chances are you'll end up removing both bolts so remember they are both threadlocked

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mioba
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Re: should your wheels spin freely

Post by mioba »

Recent new pads i got from BW come with bolts, make sure they are torqued correctly.

No binding should be present in the fronts. Careful it could be brake bind or a dying bearing - a nice messy job to replace.

As to the rears thats a whole new ball game as it comes down to shoes, disks, star adjuster. The automatic adjuster always fails.
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pleasestartnow
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Re: should your wheels spin freely

Post by pleasestartnow »

Had a similar problem recently, front and rear wheel not spinning freely.

Rear wheel I took off the drum and gave it a good clean with the wire brush and that solved that problem.

In the front wheel I ended up changing the bearing (on both sides just to keep them the same even though only one wheel was stiff). It was actually straight forward enough process, there is loads of videos that do it step by step on YouTube. I reused the calliper bolts but gave them a good clean before putting them back like was suggested there. Bearing might also not be seated properly and causing the sense of binding, I had that issue as well before and it gave a similar symptom but straight forward to sort as well.
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