Hi all,

I have a 2002 Protege5 and recently the front brakes have been giving me more trouble than normal. I have taken the caliper off on a handful of occasions to inspect the pads and such and every time it strikes me as odd that the glide pin you must remove to flip the caliper up seems to have such a tight fit.

Is that normal? I always put proper caliper lubricant on it before reinserting and it always has such a tight fit. On other cars I have worked on this is not the case, the glide pins fit snugly (IE, no play), but still slide smoothly. On this car, I have to really work at it to get the glide pin back in. Now, the other pin on the caliper, is just fine and slides around like I would expect. It is only the side you have to unbolt to lift up the caliper that gives me trouble. I tried replacing it, along with the rubber sleeve it fits in and that did not make a difference. Is it just like that? I haven't had to tinker with the rear brakes, but both sides of the front are like this.

Since I haven't worked on any other cars of the same model and year I don't really have a good frame of reference as to whether this is normal or not.