Good AFternoon!

My wife and I went downtown last night and took her 2003 Chrysler Town and Country.

once we arrived downtown, I noticed the van was driving a little strangely. it would slow down, when it should be able to coast, but I chalked it up to the uneven cobblestone street surface. As we were leaving the area, we noticed a bad smell coming from the van. At a stop light, we noticed that the front passenger brake was smoking.

a few factors to consider:
1. before arriving downtown, there was a wreck on the freeway. we sat through about 30+ minutes of stop and go traffic.
2. upon arriving downtown, we never parked. we drove slowly around for approximately 20 minutes looking for a parking spot and decided to leave.

after noticing that the brake was smoking i pulled over at the nearest spot (a grocery store in a rather unsavory part of town). we sat there for a minute and let the brakes cool off. i decided that we'd at least need to get to a safer part of town before it got dark. we drove slowly several blocks before they started smoking again and ended up in a walmart parking lot. i jacked up the van, took off the wheel (note - the lugnuts were too hot to hold) and tapped the caliper a few times with the lugwrench. dust fell off. nothing really shifted that i could tell. i couldn't budge the disc when i tried to move it.

after letting the brakes cool back down, i decided it was only a short jaunt to my sister's house. i dropped it off there.

this morning, my dad and i went over to my sister's house. To show him what it was doing, we drove around the neighborhood for a while, but the problem was no longer present. the front passenger wheel traveled freely while coasting in neutral. i widened my driving circles and went on faster roads, using the brakes as much as i could, but when we pulled back into my sister's driveway, the temperature of the brakes was normal. no smell. nothing. we jacked it up and put it in neutral, and the wheel was able to spin.

after finding the problem was gone, my dad suggested he follow me home. it's about a 15 mile drive. the few miles is city traffic, i thought that if the problem was going to reoccur, it might be during stop and go. then a good portion of it is 55 mph highway. once we reached the highway we planned to pull over and check the temperature of the brakes. then halfway down the highway, we'd pull over again.

we got all the way home and the trouble-brake was normal temperature.

any ideas what might have caused this? i figured i'd have to install a new caliper, but, i've never really heard of intermittent, self-healing caliper seizure. now that the problem is gone, i'm not sure what to do. if i were the primary driver of the van, i'd just drive it until the problem happened again, but my wife drives it mostly and i'd rather not leave my pretty "twenty-something" stranded on the side of the road if it should occur again.

any advice is appreciated.
Thanks
-Eric

 

A couple of things can cause a seized caliper. The caliper itself can bind up from corrosion on the pins or elsewhere or the brake hose can fail internally and act like a check valve and not let the fluid return.

The car is now getting on in years and anything is possible. For peace of mind you might want to replace the calipers, pads and hoses which should head off any problems in that department.