Both rear brake calipers cracked/loose?

hjoseph · April 2

Good day all! First time Lexus owner here, bought an ‘06 IS 250 about a month ago. Love the car, had been on the look out for a fully loaded SE-L for ages! For a bit of background when I bought the car I took it on a decent test drive, all seemed fine, however in my excitement perhaps I neglected to take a proper look at the brakes etc, this will become important later on.

About a week into it and a few hundred miles later the car developed a bit of a rattle when driving over rough surfaces, I ignored it at the time as was busy and didn’t really have time to check it out properly.. Anyway another couple of weeks pass and the rattling is now almost constant and much louder so I decide to put the car up and take a look and almost had a heart attack!

Both rear calipers are only being held on by the top bolt, the bottom just swinging loose, a quick wiggle with the hands revealed this to be the obvious source of the rattling noise - As to why it gradually appeared it seems they had been held roughly in place with a Frankenstein-esque knot of cable ties!! Obviously these snapped at some point which made the problem more evident

Obviously I’m not driving this thing anywhere, but my question is what part(s) am I going to need? And how have both calipers on each side suffered the same fate? Seems like quite an unlikely failure, especially symmetrically across an axle. I’ve attached pictures of the offside right but it looks pretty much the same on the near side

steve2006 · April 2

Hi Joseph and welcome to the LOC.

I’ve seen bodges in my time but that takes first prize!

Was this a private sale or dealer ? If the latter I would be straight back there asking questions!

It’s not very clear from the pictures but you say the top bolt was in but the bottom replaced with zip ties?
Is the lower calliper slide sheared in the carrier bracket or just missing?

Apologies that I have more questions than answers but need more information to help you.

Malc1 · April 2

Hi and welcome 😄

Take full note of Steve’s thoughts above ☝️ He has bounds of knowledge 👍

Asking here, do you have personal experience of overhauling brake parts and calipers ?

If not then if this fix falls to you to sort out I would suggest you ask your regular competent garage engineer to do all this for you Hopefully you have built a good rapport over the years …….. that garage will probably have experience of overhauling calipers hopefully

Not for the feint hearted nor very sensible to put your trust in non experienced brake overhauls …… get them sorted by someone competent …… your life hinges on it all being absolutely 100% spot on

Malc

hjoseph · April 2

8 minutes ago, steve2006 said:

Hi Joseph and welcome to the LOC.

I’ve seen bodges in my time but that takes first prize!

Was this a private sale or dealer ? If the latter I would be straight back there asking questions!

It’s not very clear from the pictures but you say the top bolt was in but the bottom replaced with zip ties?
Is the lower calliper slide sheared in the carrier bracket or just missing?

Apologies that I have more questions than answers but need more information to help you.

Thanks! Indeed I’m no stranger to the odd bodge job myself but this was really something else!

It was a private sale unfortunately, I did get a good price for it and I’m imagining the guy knew about it and just put this together to unload it quickly…

It’s sheared in the carrier bracket from the looks of things, it’s difficult to tell exactly what’s going on without giving it a good cleaning as everything is under so much layers of crud

steve2006 · April 2

So hopefully you’ll get away with new carrier brackets (hopefully the carrier to hub bolts aren’t seized).

OEM are around £100.00 a side, aftermarket £30.00 and seized secondhand don’t bother.

Also looks like there’s no shim kit fitted?

I would imagine the slide pins seized due to lack of grease, the lower ones sheared off during removal attempts and out came the zip ties.

Have a read of the link

hjoseph · April 2

8 minutes ago, steve2006 said:

So hopefully you’ll get away with new carrier brackets (hopefully the carrier to hub bolts aren’t seized).

OEM are around £100.00 a side, aftermarket £30.00 and seized secondhand don’t bother.

Also looks like there’s no shim kit fitted?

I would imagine the slide pins seized due to lack of grease, the lower ones sheared off during removal attempts and out came the zip ties.

Have a read of the link

Thanks for the link, definitely seems to be similar to my issue! Have you got any links for aftermarket parts? I don’t seem to be able to find any reliable sources. And yes you are right there are no shim kits in place! Whatever work has been done on the brakes before certainly wasn’t done by a professional… (As if the cable ties weren’t enough of a giveaway - How’d you like your brakes mounted sir? Cable ties please! 🤣)

Hopefully as you say it’s as simple as new carrier brackets

37 minutes ago, Malc1 said:

Hi and welcome 😄

Take full note of Steve’s thoughts above ☝️ He has bounds of knowledge 👍

Asking here, do you have personal experience of overhauling brake parts and calipers ?

If not then if this fix falls to you to sort out I would suggest you ask your regular competent garage engineer to do all this for you Hopefully you have built a good rapport over the years …….. that garage will probably have experience of overhauling calipers hopefully

Not for the feint hearted nor very sensible to put your trust in non experienced brake overhauls …… get them sorted by someone competent …… your life hinges on it all being absolutely 100% spot on

Malc

Thanks for the welcome! I’ve done basic brake jobs before but as you say I’d probably be leaving this to my mechanic as everything is so seized up I wouldn’t know where to start!

steve2006 · April 3

Just been looking into this more and it appears there are 2 types of Caliper (probably solid or vented discs).

One type has a separate carrier bracket ( I think for solid discs) and the other seems to have the bottom slide pin screwed directly into the hub, if this is the case with yours and the pin has sheared in the hub it going to need drilling out and the remains removed without damaging the threads.

hjoseph · April 3

5 hours ago, steve2006 said:

Just been looking into this more and it appears there are 2 types of Caliper (probably solid or vented discs).

One type has a separate carrier bracket ( I think for solid discs) and the other seems to have the bottom slide pin screwed directly into the hub, if this is the case with yours and the pin has sheared in the hub it going to need drilling out and the remains removed without damaging the threads.

Ah interesting - I believe it is the separate bracket type, in any case I’ve put a message out to my mechanic asking him to take more of an in depth look so hopefully he comes back soon and can get this sorted & car back on the road! I’ll update back with what I find - Thanks for all your help 😊