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Old Jun 26th, 2022, 21:56   #3
Bugjam1999
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Last Online: Apr 26th, 2024 12:00
Join Date: Nov 2012
Location: London and Cambridge
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Hi,

Couple of things-

Personally I don’t think the time and cost required to rebuild calipers at home is worth it, but others have done so successfully and there’s no great secret to it. If one of the pistons is stuck you may have fun getting it out- as Othen suggested, it will be easier to use the car’s hydraulic system to do so.

I suggest you take a rear wheel off and have a good look at the seized caliper before deciding what to do- they may be past the point of being renovated anyway, a set I had on a previous car were so corroded that the metal surrounding and holding in the pad retaining pins was really thin.. so I scrapped them and bought a replacement set.

If you replace the calipers, your car will have either ate or girling calipers at the back, I suggest you buy girling ones as replacements as they’re far more common, which in turn means pads are a lot easier to get hold of. The mounting points on the car are identical for the two types of caliper so there’s no fitting issues.

The flexible rubber hoses for the brakes break down inside with age and can act as one way valves, since the front brakes are working fine that suggests both that the master cylinder is working ok and also suggests the rear hoses might be breaking down internally. The hoses are cheap, I’d replace all 6 on the car if there’s any suspicion.

As Othen says these cars are really very simple to work on, but beware that the end of the rear brake lines that go into the caliper just love to shear off, so soak them for a few days in penetrating oil and use a lot of heat to help free them off.

Cheers
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