Hot Brakes

[Midge]

Hello The Forum

We had a great weekend driving around the Dales, including going down some pretty steep/long hills. Being new to this van driving malarkey I just drove it like my Fiesta, leaving it in top (4th) and using the foot brake as needed. In hindsight this is obviously not the correct way to do things

So we're most of the way down and this god awful smell fills the cab and smoke is pouring (can you pour a gas?) out of the passenger side front wheel/arch area. The brakes never failed or seemed to be losing it though, but clearly not a happy bus...

Pulled over to let it cool, smoke still guffing out so ended up squirting about 3 litres of water all over both sides of the wheel, pretty much anywhere I could aim the bottle. Man that side was HOT!

From there on I used 3rd or 2nd instead of the brakes, pretending I couldn't hear the screams from the back-end, and it didn't bother us again so I guess I know the better approach now. Don't get me wrong - I was using intermittent application NOT dragging them constantly, but I think a little drag was necessary to avoid jolting everything around including the usual gas bottles, crockery, small dog etc...

Question It only happened on 1 side of the system so was the hot side the 'good' side and the cold side being inefficient, or is the cold side behaving and the hot side showing some potential problem

Cheers, Thicky-from-Leeds

[bigherb]

If only one side was hot then more likely the cool side is not working correctly and has seized piston/mechanism and the other side was doing all the work. T25 brakes are actually very good but you should go down a hill in a lower gear even in a Fiesta.

[kevtherev]

Throwing water on a hot disc has it's own issues.
Cracking and warping spring to mind

[kcbart]

Similar thing happened to me earlier this year in the Peak District.
It turned out to be a seized caliper.

[Midge]

Thanks all, I'll take a close look at both sides as soon as poss, to see what's going on.

Cheers!

[AdrianC]

We had a great weekend driving around the Dales, including going down some pretty steep/long hills. Being new to this van driving malarkey I just drove it like my Fiesta, leaving it in top (4th) and using the foot brake as needed. In hindsight this is obviously not the correct way to do things

It's not the right way to drive the Fester, either. Broadly speaking, you should be using the same gear for a descent as you'd use for the ascent, and let the engine braking do most of the work.