Do not use brake grease on your caliper pins

I ordered it through Toyota.

wiswind said:

I just did some reading.......alldataDIY and my Toyota Factory manuals for my 2003 Sienna.
They do indeed say to use a different grease for the caliper pins than what you use to lube the pad slider points and anti-squeel shims.
They list it as "Lithium Soap Base Glycol Grease".
I did a internet search.....seems a few folks have been wondering about the same thing.....
Came up with just what BMWPOWER lists in his original post.

Thank you for posting this.....as I was wondering about it when I was reading about brakes on my Sienna.
I think this post will save some folks some extra work (doing brakes sooner than they expected).

Click to expand...

You are correct. "Lithium Soap Base Glycol Grease" is the name as listed in the factory manuals. I will be trying it out this weekend if all goes well. Will report back my experiences.

Got a change to relube the pins today with the Toyota stuff. The previous brake grease job on the front pins I did from about 1k miles ago was totally gummed up - no movement.

I was doing the rear brakes for the first time today so they still have the factory grease on the pins. Although the remaining grease looked kinda white and not pink, it smelled very similar to the new Toyota stuff I was about to install (moldy smell).

I cleaned out the old grease with a bunch of wooden Q tips, paper towels and Brakleen.

One tip I found out from doing this several times over the past year or so:
When inserting the newly greased pin, do not compress the boot. Insert the pin part way, then with the boot at it's normal position (not compressed or over extended) hold the boot in position and push the pin into the boot so as to not compress the boot or evacuate all the air. Do not create a vacuum like this guy:

http://www.techno-fandom.org/~hobbit/cars/brkjob/
http://www.techno-fandom.org/~hobbit/cars/brkjob/52squish.jpg

Don't remove all the air as this leaves the pin compressed in the hole and prevents the pin from moving easily. When doing it my way, the pin should bounce back easily when pushed into the hole with your finger.