It looks like my 2004 x-type is going to need a new brake caliper on the driver's side rear wheel, as it looks to be seized up. This is the third caliper in two years on the same wheel. I am wondering if this is a common issue (could not find anything particularly revealing after searching the forum) or what I can do to avoid this problem. I've driven it about 10K miles in the last two years, so it doesn't get a lot of use, especially in the last 6 months. I attached a picture here, which shows a pretty well rusted parking brake spring. Thanks for you help.

 

Well thats normal for the uk its the drivers side that gets all the grime as you drive and cars pass the drivers side what i do is strip the brakes every six months and clean up the caliper to keep it all moving its just one of those things you get to know as you drive them and standing a car is not good its better to drive them and keep well serviced cheers hope this helps at least the calipers are not expencive at least here they are not good luck

 

Sawduster, I had the same sort of issue with my x-type. I would end up replace a caliper on the rear end of my car every year from the e-brake sticking. Check out this post that I made. You may find it of benefit.

https://www.jaguarforums.com/forum/x...fix-1-a-73065/

I show how to rebuild the caliper. Doesn't take all that long and you can do a few things to help make things last longer (like some heavy duty grease on the bearing for the e-brake lever). The first time doing the caliper there is a bit of cost (specialty socket, the kit), but it is still much less than the cost of a caliper and then you are doing it for just a little bit of your time. I ended up getting a second caliper to have on hand that I simply swapped the calipers back and forth on the car and this allowed me to rebuild the caliper on my own schedule.

 

Thanks for the comments and suggestions. I went and took a picture of the passenger side which should be attached here. You can see there is no visible corrosion on the spring or e-brake mechanism, despite the fact that this is probably the original caliper that came with the car. It's odd to see such a big difference.

Passenger side rear

 

Yes as i said it the cars passing on the drvers side that throws water to the center of the road as you pass each other and if the road is salty ect it dont take long freeing them off is not a long job 38.00 uk pounds buys you a new one

 

Sawduster, where things tend to corrode is behind the lever for the e-brake. There is a bronze bearing there that corrodes as I recall. I know my post talks extensively about this bearing corroding. Either way, my post tears the caliper down to parade rest and shows you how to build it all the way back up.

Just to ask a silly question, when you are having the caliper put back on the car, are you making sure to put the pin on the brake pad into the slot on the caliper piston? I only ask as I can imagine if you don't, this is going to cause the piston to not apply pressure evenly and this could cause the piston to twist inside the caliper, leading to a binding situation. If you need me to go into more detail about this, let me know.

 

Deleted

 

If you are using the parking brake a lot it could be just sticking. You can tap the small lever back that has the spring on it to see if it releases the brake. It did on mine.

There is a post here talking about this problem in detail.