Front Caliper Piston Seal Tweaked

[swshawaii]

Removed front brake calipers to fix a low speed brake pull to the right and to service the four slider pins with caliper lube. They were all binding and covered with a sticky tar-like black substance I presume was anti seize or chassis grease. Also found one piston seal folded over. I've read to replace calipers instead of servicing. I priced Motorcraft refurbished units for $72 each. Seal kits and phenolic pistons are $11 for each side. What's involved in rebuilding, and does it need to be done off the truck? Any special tools? Thanks in advance.



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[EddieS'04]

Steve,

It is easy to rebuild them. No special tools needed. Make sure the cavity isnt so rusted, that is cant be sanded out.



Lube the o-ring and cavity very good. The trick to getting the new dust seal in place is.

Put it on the piston first. slide it up enough to lube the edge of the piston. Work the seal into its' caliper ridge. Slowly push the piston sqaurely into place The tolerance is very close. It might take some grunt. The dust seal will pop into the piston ridge when it bottoms out. Just lube the the parts enough. I have used brake fluid and silicone lube.

 

[swshawaii]

Thanks Eddie, just need to find the seals now. Wonder if NASCAR is looking for a 135 lb. tire changer, I'm getting lots of practice. LOL

 

[Jeffksf B]

Sounds like a good excuse to source some junkyard calipers and have them powder coated, rebuild them yourself and then install new shiny calipers:grin:

 

[swshawaii]

Great idea but powder coating is more like gold plating around here.



$200 quote for my $150 rear diffy cover. I'll call back, yeah right. :kiss_it:

 

[Richard L]

Eddie is correct....Calipers are not hard to rebuild. I used to always rebuild mine. However, I discovered that for a few dollars more, places like AutoZone would sell you a factory rebuilt caliper with a 50K mile or even a lifetime warranty. So I would buy a set of rebuilt calipers and the next time I needed to do another brake job I would take the rebuilt units in under the warranty and exchange them for two newly rebuilt units. They never asked questions as long as you had the receipt with the warranty. That makes them much cheaper than rebuilding them yourself.



...Rich

 

[Todd Z]

That rubber dust seal rolls back properly whan you compress the caliper back to place. IF its not torn or leaking there is NO need to rebuild.



Replace the slide pins with the new ones and roll out !!



Todd Z