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I feel a little foolish on this one, but here's the story. Everyone tells me, its a waste of time to rebuild the calipers, but as soon as I hear that, I take the bait and the challenge. I'm going to rebuild them. Why not? All that seems to be a problem is the stuck guide pins and the ripped dust boots.
So, I start. First on the rear calipers I order the rebuilding kit from FPC Groton and after a tremendous amount of time and energy, I have broken down the split caliper and cleaned everything up as best as I can. Assign 4 hours to both sides rear. I'm able to assemble everything, but there is one problem. There is a split ring that supposedly holds the bottom of the piston dust boot on the caliper frame. The frame has no groove, however, and I wonder how come the rubber stays in place. Wet with brake fluid, it seems to me the bottom of the boot will slide up over the cylindrical part which it covers. But, having no choice, I assemble is with the ring and install both calipers. I also replace the almost non-existent ebrake shoes on won side, but not the other. So far so good the rear brakes seem to be operating fine. But, I loose sleep at night wondering how the dust boot stays attached to the caliper frame. The other end of the boot is OK because it fits into the groove in the piston.
A similar problem presents itself in the case of the front brakes and piston dust boots, there. I am pleased to find a local auto parts place that doesn't disparage my intention to rebuild the calipers and orders the piston ring and dust boot that comes in a small box. $5.00 each side. I'm ready to go having cleaned everything, reamed out the frozen guide pin sockets and lubricated the pins, etc.
Tremendous frustration follows:
I cannot get the bottom (larger end of the boot to install into the groove in the caliper frame. Try as I might I can get 3/4 of it pushed down with a blunt screw driver, but I can't get to the part that is near the bottom where access is impeded by the structure of the sliding bracket. It occurs to me that the professional re-builders probably have tool that slams down and just pops the rubber ring into the groove, but short of that, I am stumped.
Because the princess needs her car right away, I am obliged to install the front calipers wihout the dust boot. Of course the brakes are now working fine and they probably will for a while. Please, if anyone can predict, what whould I expect and how soon from a caliper that is missing its dust boot.
Also, I tried using the new piston ring that came in the re-build box, but I could not get the piston to seat with it in place so I went back and reused the original rubber ring and it seemed to be tight and adequate. So, in the long run, both rebuild kits @ only $5.00 each turned out to be a complete waste of materials and time. I would have been better off just freeing up the glide pins and sticking the calipers back in place, because that is essentially the situation, now.
By the way. Freeing up frozen guide pins is one of the tougher parts of the rebuilding process. I wonder why someone hasn't come up with a better design to prevent the pins from freezing. When I removed the front calipers only one pin out of 4 was operational. The others took considerable force with a vice and lots of P&B before I could loosen them up. And then there was the cleaning process which was a challenge.
So, the original advice, not to rebuild, probably made sense.
However, now that I have everything free and easy to work with, if I can just add the dust boot, I'll be OK, rather than spending $50 each for new calipers.
Bob Franklin
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