My own JK 'Big Brake' research:

[PabloK]

Actually it does have merit. It shows you have no clue what you are talking about and are spitting lies.

No this will not be "cleaned up" but if you would like your own thread I can make you one. And who is the "we" you are referring to?

Yes I talk to people like this in person. If you are an idiot, I will tell you.

You have proven my own point. You probably are struggling to read all of these posts that have gone up quickly, I understand, reading can be difficult sometime, maybe your tires? I'm sure if your 2nd bolt was on nice and tight, you probably didn't have any damage, and I'm happy for you. That's really great man!

If your reading was better, you would probably would have picked up that my 2nd bolt was loose, letting the caliper drop and drag on the wheel at 70 miles per hour. When this happens, damage can occur

I'm sorry you are struggling with this. Let me know how else I can help.

 

[OverlanderJK]

You have proven my own point. You probably are struggling to read all of these posts that have gone up quickly, I understand, reading can be difficult sometime, maybe your tires? I'm sure if your 2nd bolt was on nice and tight, you probably didn't have any damage, and I'm happy for you. That's really great man!

If your reading was better, you would probably would have picked up that my 2nd bolt was loose, letting the caliper drop and drag on the wheel at 70 miles per hour. When this happens, damage can occur

I'm sorry you are struggling with this. Let me know how else I can help.

You can start with better spelling and factual information.

If you are going to try and make fun of someone, at least proof read your shit.

In the meantime, you can get fucked.

 

[PabloK]

You obviously have no clue who you're talking to. And no clue in general.

Glad your part of the community.

Yup no damage, I'm just making shit up.

 

[PabloK]

You can start with better spelling and factual information.

If you are going to try and make fun of someone, at least proof read your shit.

In the meantime, you can get fucked.

That's all great, could care less.

I just want to make sure you understand the issue. You are just jawing non-stop, insults, attacks...blah blah blah. This is stuff my 12 year old nephew says.

I'm just embarrassed for you at this point. Probably should just take a break from the computer big guy.

 

[OverlanderJK]

That's all great, could care less.

I just want to make sure you understand the issue. You are just jawing non-stop, insults, attacks...blah blah blah. This is stuff my 12 year old nephew says.

I'm just embarrassed for you at this point. Probably should just take a break from the computer big guy.

You could care less or you couldn't care less?

If you are as bad with auto mechanics as you are on the Internet, I can see why your shit failed. Let's get back to your non factual information because ever since I called you out for lying you have changed topics.

 

[WJCO]

You need to find out exactly what failed and why. I can truthfully say that I have never even used locktite on the bolts that secure a caliper bracket to the knuckle on my own vehicle or on a customers. I've never had any issues. I don't think the locktite is your problem.

 

[PabloK]

You could care less or you couldn't care less?

If you are as bad with auto mechanics as you are on the Internet, I can see why your shit failed. Let's get back to your non factual information because ever since I called you out for lying you have changed topics.

Both phrases use a descriptive approach and can be used interchangeably without judgement. Again, you are wrong.

Dude just give it up.... I'm not even sure what you are talking about anymore. Blah blah blah blah get a life.

 

[PabloK]

You need to find out exactly what failed and why. I can truthfully say that I have never even used locktite on the bolts that secure a caliper bracket to the knuckle on my own vehicle or on a customers. I've never had any issues. I don't think the locktite is your problem.

Thanks bud,

Wilwood was of no help, came here to see if any other jeepers have had this crazy shit happen. I'm going to reach out to loctite tomorrow and learn more about how it works and to what temp extremes it can take... particularly it's use on calipers. My other real concern is the use of the oem bolts on the kit. Maybe they are too short? Interestingly it looks like their kits now come with their own supplied bolts.... I'm going to order some and compare with my oem ones. Maybe they spotted an issue early on in production and swapped some hardware.

Maybe my mechanic didn't use enough locktite, just trying to get some help. Appreciate it.

 

[WJCO]

Both phrases use a descriptive approach and can be used interchangeably without judgement. Again, you are wrong.

Dude just give it up.... I'm not even sure what you are talking about anymore. Blah blah blah blah get a life.

Dude, This is one forum where fu fu fluffy shit won't fly. If misinformation is posted, it will be called out. That's what overlander is doing and that's what I did from the get-go. I still think the bolts weren't properly torqued at some point. You blamed a manufacturer with nothing to support your claim. That's why they told you to go pound sand.

 

[WJCO]

My other real concern is the use of the oem bolts on the kit. Maybe they are too short? Interestingly it looks like their kits now come with their own supplied bolts.... I'm going to order some and compare with my oem ones. Maybe they spotted an issue early on in production and swapped some hardware.

If the bolts were too short to fasten properly, that would be noticed during the original torquing. They will pull the threads out as you are torquing them. Do you have the bolts or were they lost on the road?

 

[PabloK]

Dude, This is one forum where fu fu fluffy shit won't fly. If misinformation is posted, it will be called out. That's what overlander is doing and that's what I did from the get-go. I still think the bolts weren't properly torqued at some point. You blamed a manufacturer with nothing to support your claim. That's why they told you to go pound sand.

My caliper falling off is not fu fu fluffy shit. I take it seriously, it poses a risk to my family, and it's costing me money. I'm doing my due diligence understand all potential avenues of the caliper bolts failing.

The calipers were bolted on properly, period. If you don't believe me that's fine, just move along. I don't think 10 people insulting me does any good. Make your point and talk like a normal human being. The way "some" of you act is disheartening, pathetic and simply just trashy. Is it as childish as me being a new member? Do I not have enough posts yet to have some forum cred?! That's the feeling I get as your basically telling me and my installer are wrong. It's 2 bolts, red locktite, and a torque wrench on a relatively unproven setup for the JK. Pretty hard to fuck that up.

However I'm still going to keep looking into this, if you don't care then click on a different thread. I appreciate the folks that have respectfully spoken up. Not sure there's much else here.

 

[PabloK]

If the bolts were too short to fasten properly, that would be noticed during the original torquing. They will pull the threads out as you are torquing them. Do you have the bolts or were they lost on the road?

I have 2 original bolts from the front, the other 2 fell out.

I think the bolts could have been too short and still fastened, strength however would have just been compromised.

Here is the bolt I pulled from the rear, it's odd how close
To the middle of the bolt the loc is. Maybe it just pushed out thus not a tight seal?

 

[TrainWreck618]

I know you don't want to hear it, but it sounds like it wasn't torqued right. Im not saying there couldn't be another issue, but accidents do happen. He could have torqued your fronts to the rear spec, which could present issues on any brake setup. The loctite on your caliper bolts sounds different also..

 

[werks]

Pablo, a couple of comments. First while you may be getting a bunch of flack about it if you do not or are not comfortable working on your vehicle and take it to a shop, there is nothing wrong with that and it's nothing to be ashamed about. The Jeep world seems to be composed of a lot of self sufficient people which is great, but in order to get to that point most people would need to be shown how to do things or have someone to help them the first time. I might get flack for this but people often forget that not all of us have access to people with that knowledge to take us under their wings when we first start off.

Second I'm very familiar with Wilwood products from my involvement with race cars and honestly in the performance/track oriented market they are considered to be very entry level brake components. So while some people here have commented about $3500 for all 4 corners of rotors and calipers being expensive, for a product that is primarily marketed towards the road race/track car segment where people often run 15" carbon ceramic brake rotors where one of them cost more than your entire brake system it is certainly not an expensive system. I say this not to insult but to put things into perspective, this is marketed as a racing type product which while it may seem expensive to the Jeep market it is not expensive to the market that it is intended to. Because of that you unfortunately ran into the very often said "you get what you pay for" saying. Meaning you got a very cheap "performance oriented' braking system, so an older caliper design that is used across multiple platforms in a more universal manner which in this specific application was probably not developed or tested that well. For the money in this case you probably would have been better off just going with something like the Dynatrac big brake system, but that is hind sight and you thought that you were buying something high end which is marketing and unfortunately you fell for it. Not something that you can really fault yourself for.

Now on to the issue as mentioned this is an older generation racing caliper that is used universally across multiple platforms. That is possible because the calipers do not bolt directly to the hub/knuckle like most OEM calipers do but are what is called a "radial caliper" meaning the caliper bolts to an adapter plate which is then bolted to the knuckle. Normally this is not an issue and it is a very common system used on race cars and a lot of the more performance oriented street bikes but it does imho mean that you have more to keep an eye on whish on a track car is not an issue as you are pulling pads and checking stuff like this after every track day. It also appears from your pictures that the adapters they provided that bolt onto the knuckles are made out of aluminum. So you now have an iron bolt being screwed into an aluminum adapter to which your iron brake calipers are bolted onto. So you are going to run into different expansion rates of the materials due to heat. Specifically aluminum which in this case I'm guessing is something like a lower cost 6000 series aluminum is going to expand more when exposed to heat than the iron bolt that passes through the knuckle and is threaded into it the aluminum adapter to secure the caliper to the knuckle. So looking at things a couple of potential cause for your issues come to mind:

A) The bolt may not have been properly torqued down in the first place.
B) Based on the pictures it does not look like a lot of red loctite was applied to the bolts and that could have been an issue that resulted in the bolt backing out. Although I can understand your mechanic being careful with application of that stuff because it can be a bear to ever get bolts loose again when red instead of blue is used.
C) The different expansion rates of the iron bolt threaded into the aluminum adapter may have resulted in the screw backing out over time. The iron bolt expands less when exposed to heat than the aluminum adapter so in essence as the brakes heat up the adapter would have expanded more than the bolt reducing the tension on the bolt.

My thoughts are that while it may have been A reading a torque wrench is not difficult so it was more than likely a combination of B & C. Very little red loctite and expansion of the aluminum adapter when exposed to heat, which also happening repeatedly several hundred if not thousands of times over the duration of time the brake system was installed may also have contributed to what little loctite there was present breaking its bond further contributing to the bolts vibrating loose. Once one bolt starts to loosen the entire process just accelerates until ultimately one of the bolts falls out and when that happens and you applied the brakes the pads will grab the rotor and then the caliper adapter with caliper attached will then rotate around the one remaining bolt attaching it to the knuckle in the direction of rotation, basically pivoting the caliper out until one end of the caliper comes to rest on the inside of the wheel as can be seen by the groove worn inside the wheel and the damage on the edge of the caliper in your pictures.

So if you plan on continuing to use the Wilwood brakes on your jeep I would at the least put a whole lot of red loctite on the bolts that pass through the knuckle and thread into the aluminum adapter securing the calipers to the knuckle and check those every couple thousand miles . When you do re-torque slightly below the original setting to make sure they are still tight. If you feel any movement take them out and reapply the loctite and torque them down again going up about 5-10 ftlbs over initial specs. Or what I would really recommend is that you have the bolts drilled for safety wire. Install them as per specs with the red loctite and then safety wire them and they should never come loose again. Hope that helps!

 

[PabloK]

Pablo, a couple of comments. First while you may be getting a bunch of flack about it if you do not or are not comfortable working on your vehicle and take it to a shop, there is nothing wrong with that and it's nothing to be ashamed about. The Jeep world seems to be composed of a lot of self sufficient people which is great, but in order to get to that point most people would need to be shown how to do things or have someone to help them the first time. I might get flack for this but people often forget that not all of us have access to people with that knowledge to take us under their wings when we first start off.

Second I'm very familiar with Wilwood products from my involvement with race cars and honestly in the performance/track oriented market they are considered to be very entry level brake components. So while some people here have commented about $3500 for all 4 corners of rotors and calipers being expensive, for a product that is primarily marketed towards the road race/track car segment where people often run 15" carbon ceramic brake rotors where one of them cost more than your entire brake system it is certainly not an expensive system. I say this not to insult but to put things into perspective, this is marketed as a racing type product which while it may seem expensive to the Jeep market it is not expensive to the market that it is intended to. Because of that you unfortunately ran into the very often said "you get what you pay for" saying. Meaning you got a very cheap "performance oriented' braking system, so an older caliper design that is used across multiple platforms in a more universal manner which in this specific application was probably not developed or tested that well. For the money in this case you probably would have been better off just going with something like the Dynatrac big brake system, but that is hind sight and you thought that you were buying something high end which is marketing and unfortunately you fell for it. Not something that you can really fault yourself for.

Now on to the issue as mentioned this is an older generation racing caliper that is used universally across multiple platforms. That is possible because the calipers do not bolt directly to the hub/knuckle like most OEM calipers do but are what is called a "radial caliper" meaning the caliper bolts to an adapter plate which is then bolted to the knuckle. Normally this is not an issue and it is a very common system used on race cars and a lot of the more performance oriented street bikes but it does imho mean that you have more to keep an eye on whish on a track car is not an issue as you are pulling pads and checking stuff like this after every track day. It also appears from your pictures that the adapters they provided that bolt onto the knuckles are made out of aluminum. So you now have an iron bolt being screwed into an aluminum adapter to which your iron brake calipers are bolted onto. So you are going to run into different expansion rates of the materials due to heat. Specifically aluminum which in this case I'm guessing is something like a lower cost 6000 series aluminum is going to expand more when exposed to heat than the iron bolt that passes through the knuckle and is threaded into it the aluminum adapter to secure the caliper to the knuckle. So looking at things a couple of potential cause for your issues come to mind:

A) The bolt may not have been properly torqued down in the first place.
B) Based on the pictures it does not look like a lot of red loctite was applied to the bolts and that could have been an issue that resulted in the bolt backing out. Although I can understand your mechanic being careful with application of that stuff because it can be a bear to ever get bolts loose again when red instead of blue is used.
C) The different expansion rates of the iron bolt threaded into the aluminum adapter may have resulted in the screw backing out over time. The iron bolt expands less when exposed to heat than the aluminum adapter so in essence as the brakes heat up the adapter would have expanded more than the bolt reducing the tension on the bolt.

My thoughts are that while it may have been A reading a torque wrench is not difficult so it was more than likely a combination of B & C. Very little red loctite and expansion of the aluminum adapter when exposed to heat, which also happening repeatedly several hundred if not thousands of times over the duration of time the brake system was installed may also have contributed to what little loctite there was present breaking its bond further contributing to the bolts vibrating loose. Once one bolt starts to loosen the entire process just accelerates until ultimately one of the bolts falls out and when that happens and you applied the brakes the pads will grab the rotor and then the caliper adapter with caliper attached will then rotate around the one remaining bolt attaching it to the knuckle in the direction of rotation, basically pivoting the caliper out until one end of the caliper comes to rest on the inside of the wheel as can be seen by the groove worn inside the wheel and the damage on the edge of the caliper in your pictures.

So if you plan on continuing to use the Wilwood brakes on your jeep I would at the least put a whole lot of red loctite on the bolts that pass through the knuckle and thread into the aluminum adapter securing the calipers to the knuckle and check those every couple thousand miles . When you do re-torque slightly below the original setting to make sure they are still tight. If you feel any movement take them out and reapply the loctite and torque them down again going up about 5-10 ftlbs over initial specs. Or what I would really recommend is that you have the bolts drilled for safety wire. Install them as per specs with the red loctite and then safety wire them and they should never come loose again. Hope that helps!

Thank you, thank you. I really appreciate the time and detail you went into explaining this for me. I agree with the comment on a budget system... never again... lesson learned.

I'm going to do the safety wire per your recommendation.... excellent idea. Half of this me being worried about driving with my kids.

My other system is full brembos/type 3 rotors which in the car world is a pretty standard performance setup even at 9k and so having an issue with the bolt just falling out is foreign to me on such a kit. This is my 6 vehicle with such a kit and I have never experienced anything like it. I think you nailed it that this is really just a cheap system. I had always thought willwood was a really solid company.

Sorry it's 3:23 am here lll PM you tomorrow. Time to move on.

 

[PabloK]

I know you don't want to hear it, but it sounds like it wasn't torqued right. Im not saying there couldn't be another issue, but accidents do happen. He could have torqued your fronts to the rear spec, which could present issues on any brake setup. The loctite on your caliper bolts sounds different also..

I hear you.. your probably right. What do mean the loctite sounds different? (Your last comment)

Smelled like pennies when i inspected it.

 

[2nd.gunman]

This thread is retarded

 

[PabloK]

This thread is retarded

Try using more appropriate rhetoric.

 

[Ddays]

Try using more appropriate rhetoric.

Before I'd spend another minute on this thread and another dime on those calipers, I'd remove them and install the Dynatracs.

 

[Ddays]

Before I'd spend another minute on this thread and another dime on those calipers, I'd remove them and install the Dynatracs.