...on a car that had to be driven to work the next morning. I found the problem when I went to replace the front pads. One of the four pistons was stuck and NOTHING would move it. I pried, hammered, and prayed - nothing.

Well, I pulled a replacement caliper from one of the parts cars. It looked great, and the pistons moved freely. Even the seals were good. I know I had bled the breaks before the car was wrecked. I took the caliper into the garage, cleaned it up, wire brushed it, and sprayed PB Blaster on the bleeder nipples.

For some reason, these nipples seemed smaller than normal, 1/4". Others I have seen are either 7mm or 8mm. Anyway, I broke off two of the three! For the record, the best approach to freeing them seems to be to use a sharp, transient torque. Also, use fresh PB Blaster and let it soak more than 10 minutes! If your PB Blaster seems flat and oily, the volatile chemicals that help it penetrate are gone, and you're left with little more than stinky oil!

Thanks to my son Mitch, we have four parts cars, so I next took a caliper from a care he crashed 3-4 years ago (I had it stored in the garage). The bleeder nipples came loose, but unfortunately, it, too, had a seized piston. I used the caliper with the broken bleeder nipples as a piston donor. I disassembled it by removing the four bolts holding it together. I used a pair of channel locks cushioned by several layers of aluminum tape to rasp the replacement piston and rotated it while gently pulling outward. It came out with no deformation or scraping.

I then removed the seized piston from the replacement caliper (used the same channel-locks WITHOUT the aluminum tape), cleaned the bore with steel wool (made sure plug the hole with a paper towel and not hurt the seal in the cylinder wall), cleaned everything up. The replacement went on without too much trouble. Once again, my Motive Products pressure bleeder paid for itself in making the bleeding job tolerable. The replacement caliper seems to be working fine.

The morals of this story are:

- One-hour brick jobs are not.
- Keep a caliper repair kit on hand if you have aspirations of doing brake work.
- See if you can free the bleeder nipples on a donor caliper BEFORE spending the time to remove it from the parts car.
- Any Volvo repair involving disassembly will permit inspection that identifies one or more jobs of equal complexity (need replacement of control arm suspension bushings and brake hoses in this case).

Glen