1988 Peugeot 405 SRi from Finland - Comments

Electric window switch broke.

Rear breaks (disc) were stuck when I bought the car. (The car stopped with the front brakes only).

Peugeot has been so far a lot more reliable than Buick.

Very comfortable ride.

So far it has also been reliable.

Performance is surprising, 0-100km/h takes only 9.5s.

Fuel consumption is only 7.3 litres/100km on highway.

Overall very good car.

Peugeot 405 rear brakes do stick and sometimes get very hot!!! whats the best way to solve this??

I've never looked at the rear discs on a 405 but I know on other makes if you disassemble the caliper and reassemble it with everything treated with copper-based grease, this should free up the caliper.

You might have to work the caliper a little to get it to free up without the spring in place.

About the rear discs sticking, you might want to check first if the rear brake compensator valve (if there is one) is properly set. It works with the amount of load over the rear tyres, increasing the brake fluid flow with the load.

This would be the cheapest and easiest thing to fix, start there. But most likely, as the previous comment says, the rear calipers will be stuck.. They should be disassembled, cleaned of all the rust that must be in there by now, an assembled only with a new kit (new ring seal). The only fluid touching those parts once you are assembling the caliper back again, should be brake fluid. Oil based fluids as petrol, diesel, grease, etc. will react with the new seal and it will swell and get stuck again..

Remember that to put the piston back in the caliper, you should push it inside, while turning it around like a screw.

Replace all of the brake fluid, purge the air from all the calipers (starting from the farthest one from the pump) and done.. Oh, while purging the rear wheels, you might have to lock the compensator valve in the open position, because when you jack up the car, the rear axle hangs loose and the valve "thinks" that the rear has no load on, and it practically closes the way of the fluids to the rear wheels..