Modern Iron Brake Problem

[Steve Braverman]

My daily driver is a 2001 Dodge Dakota. It's 2WD with the 4.7 V8 and A/T (if that matters). It has drums in the rear. The brakes have been totally re-done (new calipers, pads and rotors up front, new drums, shoes and wheel cylinders in the back). My problem is that the rear brakes will lock up at low speeds, especially when they are cold.

It's been back to the dealer twice for this problem with no improvement. The shoes and drums are from NAPA. I installed them myself. The dealer confirmed that I did nothing wrong. Their only suggestion is to replace all the NAPA parts with MOPAR parts. They, however, feel that the brakes are acceptable as-is.

The NAPA drums warped almost immediately when new (Chinese). I brought them back to NAPA, and they replaced them. They warped again. The dealer cut them the first time it was there, but they have warped again. Will tossing the new Chinese NAPA shoes and drums and replacing them with Mexican Mopar parts make a difference?

[TexRiv_63]

Steve,

Sounds like two issues here. the rear brake lockup could be caused by the wrong wheel cylinders, are you sure the replacements were the correct piston size? The drums warping is typical for Chinese junk, unfortunately you don't have much choice at regular auto parts stores these days. Check with NAPA, sometimes they have different quality level parts available and their "Best" might be US made. I did learn the hard way with GM cars that it often was better to pay the high factory price for OEM critical wear parts in order to get the most miles out of them.