When I step on the brake hard my front caliper makes a loud creaking noise?? It sounds like an old creaky door.

It does this when as I press and unpressed the brake pedal when I'm driving and when I am stopped.

 

Single or 4-piston calipers?

 

4 piston (88 GXL)

 

Only when its hot will it start doing this

When it creaks I can feel the vibration in my pedal and on the caliper itself

Is my caliper going bad?

 

Having the same issue with my 94 R2. I was thinking a backing plate issue. Any resolution with yours yet?

 

is anything thing in your brake system broken and everything torqued down?

 

No and yes as far as I know, I keep a pretty close eye on things.

 

At a barbecue over the weekend i showed what was happening to a friend of mine who is a mechanic.

He said its like the spring inside the caliper thats behind the brake pad. The pins that hold it in need to be taken out and then I'll be able to clean/lube it up.

 

Since you have the fixed calipers, no sliders to worry about. That leads me to think one or some of your caliper pistons is probably going lazy (starting to seize). This is obviously assuming the pad backs are straight and any shims are mounted correctly.

You can take the wheel off and have someone press the brake. The noise will probably still be there at all times. Make sure your bearings are withing spec., because too much freeplay there can cause brake noise too.

For others with single piston calipers...always clean and lube the sliders well (there's a specific grease for brake sliders - something like syl-glide I think) to make sure the caliper responds correctly. As you press the brake and the piston comes out and pushes against the inner pad and that against the disk, the caliper slides to force the outer brake pad against the disk. If your inner pads wear quicker than the outer, check the sliders.

 

Had a very similar issue due to the front brake pads binding. They were just a tiny bit too wide (Left to right, looking at the pad from through the wheel). They were EBC redstuff pads and I took off a little bit of the paint from the pad itself until the pad slid without binding. Replacement pads also worked fine without modification, so I think it was just an out of spec pad. Hope that's it.

 

I was at the garage this evening experimenting. I took the springs off and it still creaked, took the pad retaining pins out, still creaked. Took the backing plates out, still creaked. Replaced the pads and the creaking stopped.

I have Porterfield R4-S at all four corners. They have two, two day HPDE sessions and a handful of autocrosses. I suppose I have cooked them.

I am moving on to the R4-E. Hopefully they won't chew up my rotors too bad!