Offside brake binding but drifting left?

[VolvoRoyS]

While it is relatively easy to remove a caliper I didn't find it easy to screw it back on the hose; you're dealing with what amounts to a very heavy nut and it would be easy to cross thread the hose. And then you would want to clamp the hose otherwise you are going to be bleeding the whole system. I suggest you read the manual before you start the job.
Recently on a car with similar front brakes I paid my local garage to change a caliper; it was less than an hour's labour so you are not going to save yourself much by doing it yourself. My advice is pay your local garage to change both sets of front pads and the one caliper for now; any competent garage can do the work - you don't need a Volvo specialist.
But at the end of the day it is your car and your money so do what you feel most comfortable with.

Roy

[ilmiont]

Well after a bit of deliberation I decided to go with my instinct and buy the whole lot. I've got everything now so Saturday should be a busy day.

One anomaly is that the new Volvo exchange calipers (stamped ATE) come with slide pins that take a T40 torx, not the 7mm hex of the old ones that features in all the documentation. They look the same otherwise, although I haven't had them side-by-side yet as the old ones are still on the car. I wonder why the head has been changed.

My plan is to screw the hoses onto the calipers before I start the job. I'll mount the new calipers while the old ones are still connected, then detach the old caliper and hose at the hard line and connect the new one with hopefully minimal fluid loss. After that it'll be a pressure bleed.

The unions have been soaking in "PB Blaster" every day for a week now. Hopefully they'll come off; I'll try to loosen them as the very first thing I do. I'll probably abort if it doesn't seem like they're going to move. I don't want to damage the hard lines as I'm not equipped to deal with them.

It would certainly have been cheaper and quicker in the end to go straight to a garage - but buying tools and learning to do it myself results in an asset; garage labour is simple expenditure. (May still end up there yet of course!)