2005 Crossfire convert. 140K miles, great car! - driving home the brakes began to drag, then heated up to smoking, soon progressed to virtually no brakes at all. Stopped and checked - both rear wheels were to hot to touch, fronts OK. The BAS light did come on. What's up, what went wrong? Any suggestions to a fix?

 

I've been here since 2009, owned three Roadsters, been to a lot of Crossfire events, I'm on six FacebooK Crossfire pages - and this is a new one.
Sounds to me like the brake controller has gone crazy and pressurized ONLY the rear brakes. - but again, that has never happened.

Or..................... you left your emergency brake on, or you had set it and when you released it, it did not release.

In any event, if things got THAT hot, I think new pads and rotors in the rear would be a good idea - AFTER you fix what is wrong.

 

I would second what pizzaguy said, and suggested. Also never heard of this one before.


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Fix the problem before it looks like this.

 

My 99 Lincoln navigator just did the same thing. Had to replace brake calipers.

 

WOW!
I've never seen that before!

 

That's a first for me. I've never seen a catastrophic failure like the above!

 

How many miles and do they salt the roads where you live. I also would suspect stuck calipers,

 

Fixed the brake problem - replaced the controller, plus discs and pads on the back ($1400). That was in April. Yesterday it all happened again! Back brakes got progressively tighter in stop-and-go traffic until fully locked up with the brake pads smoking is less that a mile! Any suggestions on what is wrong?
140K miles, streets are not salted here (Texas) and I have never used the hand brake, conservatively driven, used as a daily driver.

 

Taking a stab at it here only because I've had that happen on a different vehicle, a Harley rear brake. The piston/pistons in the caliper don't retract all the way causing the pads to drag, thus producing a lot of heat. The caliper gets hotter and hotter causing it to expand and put even more pressure on the piston. Until the piston just freezes the pads on the rotor.

It's one of those phenomena that once it starts, it just gets worse. Sometimes once everything cools down it'll act OK, on the Harley I would push the pads and piston back in with a screwdriver. But it would just do it again once it started to heat up.

Hope that helps.

 

My guess in post #8, however you explained it well.

 

Definitely not something I ever recall seeing shared here in my 17 years here on the forum
I've shared this to a few Tech guys on Facebook to see what their thoughts are

 

This happened to me last year. Pulled over and checked out the brakes and found the piston (caliper) had rust and seized up while on the highway. No way to work it loose and nearest city with replacement caliper was 40 miles away. Removed the caliper from the bracket secured the piston with a disk pad spreader I had in the trunk and attached it the the rear shock and drove on 3 brakes till I got to a store.

 

A response shared over on Facebook..............

Burnt brake fluid…
Fluid that’s never been changed and has completely lost all its protective properties causing the calipers to freeze.
Almost all major brake related failures come from fluid that’s never been changed.
Mileage doesn’t seem to matter either, it’s time if it hasn't been changed.

 

The number of people who ignore brake fluid and differential fluid is surprising.

I sometimes wonder about power steering and convertible top fluid........