Have my brakes seized?

[bigandclever]

Help

Just started my Griff up and the bloody thing won't move forwards or backwards. He's been outside for the last couple of days since a New Year drive, and of course it's been a bit cold.

Plenty of revs, no movement forwards or back. I've had one noisy(ish) clunk from the rear drivers side wheel area, which I presume is the caliper releasing.

Can't really move forwards unless I want to park in the living room, so any solutions will have to be in reverse gear.

Any thoughts?

[Slacey]

Are the discs rusty? It's probably just that the pads have 'glued' themselves to the discs with rust - it won't do any harm, and the easiest way to release the car is to put in in reverse (in your case) and gently rock the car on the clutch - it will eventually break free, but the resulting crack may require a change of underwear as it can be somewhat unnerving!

Edited by Slacey on Thursday 4th January 13:55

[bigandclever]

It's alright now, panic over. Rocked it a few more times and the other side banged off. Not a pleasant noise either.

I'm sure someone told me that handbrakes don't work on TVR's

[spend]

Kind of on Topic....

Theres a lot mentioned about warming the cars up before driving with spirit, its also important to complete your run letting the car cool down nicely (brakes engine etc) IMO. Not saying this was your problem, it just made me think...

Dave

[bigandclever]

spend said:

Kind of on Topic....

Theres a lot mentioned about warming the cars up before driving with spirit, its also important to complete your run letting the car cool down nicely (brakes engine etc) IMO. Not saying this was your problem, it just made me think...

Dave

Warming up, I agree - personally, I run my cars gently up to temperature/pressure while moving, rather than idling on the drive for 10 minutes (I expect this is a contentious issue anyway!)

As for warming down though.... as a rule, I'll warm down until the fans switch themselves off, and if engine temps are on the high side until they return to normal. But my questions is, how do you cool the brakes down? Logic (and little else) tells me that rapid cooling of hot brakes would be detrimental to their health. Also, I appreciate applying the handbrake to hot brakes may cause an issue, but the exact opposite of sticking - the brakes will be expanded since they're hot, they contract back to 'normal' when cooling to cold and then your brakes aren't holding as firm. So, what's recommended for cooling down your brakes?

and I wish I'd been "driving with spirit". Driving Miss Daisy more like

[richb]

bigandclever said:

Warming up, I agree - personally, I run my cars gently up to temperature/pressure while moving, rather than idling on the drive for 10 minutes (I expect this is a contentious issue anyway!)

Not at all, you are absolutely correct

bigandclever said:

Logic (and little else) tells me that rapid cooling of hot brakes would be detrimental to their health. Also, I appreciate applying the handbrake to hot brakes may cause an issue,

The issue is more that clamping the pads onto very hot discs causes localised temperature differences as the rest of the disc cools more quickly and this can cause the discs to fracture

bigandclever said:

what's recommended for cooling down your brakes?

I simply leave it in gear and don't use the handbrake. To be honest it's usually wet brakes that stick on.