[nottelling]

So my brake light came on randomly while driving, fluid was low, brake pads needed replacement. I went ahead and did a full pad/rotor swap on all 4 wheels. I used the brake rewind cube thing to compress the rears.

When I took off for the test ride, it seemed fine at first, but the rear wheel started dragging after a couple stops, and now the rear brakes are stuck. Not so tight they're frozen, but it feels like the parking brake is on but not releasing. Both rear wheels are stuck.

I checked the parking brake adjuster, it's loose. I can see the parking brake lever moving smoothly on both sides, so it's not binding.

What else can I check?

 

[nottelling]

Ok so update: the rear brakes were a simple fix. The pads have a little bump on them, and the piston needs to be rotated when winding back so that the little bump fits in those pads. I hadn't seen that in any of the tutorials.

So rear seems good. However, the front aren't in such great shape. Same problem, but not as bad, the brakes drag heavily. I didn't notice those because they're not as bad as the rears were.

If I pump the hell out of the brakes with the car off, they loosen themselves up. I start the car and the pedal feels normal, but they immediately bind again at the first stop. I get a "Hill start not available" warning too. Guess I'll take them apart and see if I did anything else obviously stupid.

 

[nottelling]

Update 2: Obviously stupid is the answer. There's a different pad for inner/outer sides, and I fucked that up. Thanks for coming guys, lesson learned, I'll stick to working on motorcycles from now on.