I have a Dana 30 in the front of my XJ. I have built the jeep up a fair bit and do not drive it on the road much, occasionally around town. I have had issues with the dust shields behind the rotors bending and rubbing on the rotors. I have to pull the axle shafts this weekend to replace a leaking inner axle seal. I am thinking about leaving the dust shields off. Anyone with negative experience omitting the dust shields? Thoughts? Thanks.

 

Send it! I never replace them.

 

for a mostly off road vehicle...I agree to not use them.
Very good question and great explanation...
makes it easier for other members to respond.

 

I've been on various forums for 25 years now. I've seen plenty of poorly articulated posts. Have also searched older posts to find answers to my questions and have been disappointed with missing details.

 

To add to this conversation, my opinion is that the shields have nothing to do with dust. I believe their purpose is to limit radiant heat reaching temperature-sensitive components of the suspension. In the case of XJs, this would be all the nearby ball joints.

 

I have a completely stock '98 XJ - I removed the shields from my rotors over 10 years ago and I don't believe it's ever caused a problem.

I'm actually thinking about getting some replacements, but that's only because I treat my XJ better these days and I like everything to be "just right"!

 

When I overhauled my whole front end, I did not replace them. No issues so far. Something maybe worthy of mention is, the tie rod end is somewhat close to the rotor - they cannot touch of course, but if you grease the crap out of it you can get some overflow onto the rotor that will need to be cleaned off.

 

For what it's worth the brake rotor dust shield on the front passenger wheel of my daily driver rusted off about 10 years ago. No problems.

 

I did it. Have a trip to Uwharrie National Forest planned for this weekend coming up. Been driving around town with no issues.

 

I've not had them installed on my XJ in 5 years or 50k miles. I did a WJ brake swap and neither dust shield would fit. I've also not had them installed in my Miata track car with a big brake kit.

I've not experienced any issues or strange wear on either vehicle. I did wrap some aluminum tape around the Miata ball joints to shield them somewhat from the heat. Maybe I should do the same on the Jeep...

 

I'm late to spot this, but it made me laugh. I actually failed an inspection on this once - I thought I was being thorough by greasing the front end before the inspection, but I went too far and got grease on the brake rotor, then failed the inspection because of it!

 

To Be Fair

How much braking are you really doing to where the rotors glows hot enough to have an effect on the ball joints or tie rod end? Maybe in a racing application but not soo much that even in a panic stop on the highway that its really going to affect the other components.

I'd refer to them more soo as debris shield because ultimately youd rather the small rocks/sticks etc small debris doesn't make its way between the rotor and hub.

Either side of this id agree with letting them be gone. On my DD cars/4wd for the road i keep them if they are nice but otherwise once they've rusted away - they stay away.

 

I tend to agree with this assessment. I don't run them on my track car, and those rotors are easily seeing 800*F+, especially since I don't have brake ducts. On FWD applications I've heard the shields help keep grease away from the brakes in the event your outer CV boot lets go. That's not an issue with our Cherokees, but keeping other grease and crud out of the way is. In any case, I'm not sure they're particularly critical, so yank them off and forget about it.