2010 Prius Brake Creaking Noise

I've got a couple of Toyota part numbers, for pin lube. Maybe @ChapmanF can comment, what's preferable:

For calipers:
Rubber Grease
Toyota p/n: 08887-01206

Toyota Disc Brake Caliper Grease p/n 08887-80609

(I see the latter available on Amazon.)

You want a sylicone lube, that's specificed for brake caliper pins, and one that's not going to swell rubber.

I'm using "Sil-Glyde Brake Lubricant", and it's worked fine.

Here's another in my notes:

Honda Caliper Pin Grease: Honda Silicone grease p/n 08C30-B0234M

Is it front or rear brakes btw? Rear brakes are complicated by the parking brake mechanism; you have to be careful during assembly that the caliper piston face is oriented like an "X", so that the pin on back of inner pad falls between spokes in that X pattern. You also want to pressure up the brake pedal, get the brakes firmly seated thus, before applying parking brake. Failure to do this, the pin can ride up on a spoke, cause uneven brake pressure and drag.

 

They're both preferable, for different places.

The -01206 is the red, translucent "rubber grease" that's specified for the slide pins, the piston, and the rubber seals and boots on all of those. It isn't silicone, by the way, it's the "lithium soap based glycol grease' referred to in the Repair Manual for those areas. It doesn't swell Toyota's rubber formulations.

The -80609 is the gray stuff to apply in the spots shown on the diagrams with a style of arrow that's not the same as the "rubber grease" arrow. Those are metal-to-metal surfaces that don't involve rubber. That's the stuff a lot of people probably substitute anti-seize for.

-Chap

 

I've used the Sil-Glyde on a variety of caliper pins, on various Hondas and our Prius, including a couple of instances where the pins have rubber O-rings, no problems, saying drying out, or swelling the rubber. For a pin, I'll wipe it clean then apply a pea-sized coat, spread it evenly, then apply maybe a split-pea additional amount. When reinserting the pin I rotate it as it goes in, hopefully ensure the lube stays uniform on the lenth of the pin.

I also ensure the rubber boot is freed up on the caliper bracket, run a little lube under the flange with a screw driver, get the boot freely rotating, ensure it's seated properly, and put a thin coating over the whole boot.

 

Either way you need to relube the pins once every 3 years, it’s part of brake maintenance.

 

The Toyota schedule has two kinds of brake maintenance:

1. Visually inspect brake linings/drums and brake pads/discs, every 6 months or 5000 miles. This is just a cursory look-over as they're rotating the tires.

2. Inspect the following: Brake linings/drums and brake pads/discs (3), every 36 months 30K miles. Footnote (3) says: Inspect thickness measurement and disc runout.

The inference with the above is there's two levels of brake inspection, the frequent visual inspection, and the periodic more serious inpspection. Where Toyota drops the ball though, is the lack of a clear/complete instruction, what the more serious inspection should include. There's no explicit mention of caliper pin relube, for example.

If you go the Repair Manual (and that's a journey unto itself), there's various actions described, basically everything you should do for an ind-depth inspection, but it's scattered, lumped in with even a complete caliber overhaul. It would be much better if they used a specific expression in the schedule, say "brake inspection", and then in the Repair Manual the had a section titled "brake inspection", with step-by-step, what should be done.

I'd agree btw, the tri-yearly or 30K inspection should include relube of the pins.