1.8 Brake upgrade w/caliper re-build
Last summer, I bought 1.8 brakes from Gary. He included 4 used rotors and a set of HPS front pads that came off of Skirt’s car, but he had no used rear 1.8 pads with any life on them. Having spent a chunk of change already, and having everything I needed to do the fronts, I decided to put off swapping the rears. AJ helped me do the front swap, and we choose to take the easy route of re-using my 1.6 calipers (you can use a 1.6 caliper with 1.8 pads and rotors as long as you put 1.8 caliper brackets on the reverse sides). Re-using the calipers meant we didn't need to deal with flushing the system. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
Over the winter, my 15 year old front calipers started making horrible metal on metal popping noises. I realized that my spring plan of swapping the rears now included re-doing the front. I had the ’99 front calipers from Gary still in the box with all of the rear parts, so I figured I would just put them on and be done with it. The problem was that I hate re-doing things. I had already worked on this once, and now was about to do it again. I started thinking about how I was about to do the front brakes again using used parts that could potentially start giving me problems at some point in the near future. Wanting to limit the re-work, I looked into new calipers. The prices of those bad boys ended that idea in a hurry. I then saw that I could get caliper re-build kits for less than $30 a corner and decided that was a decent compromise.
The Caliper re-build kits are basically just a bunch of rubber seals and some special grease. I dissembled all 4 calipers from Gary, spent about an hour with some brake cleaner and a wire brush, and got everything all cleaned up. Removing the piston from a dry caliper that has sat in a box for a year is rather interesting. I used the air compressor to blow them out. Watch your fingers, that thing doesn't budge for about 15 seconds even with 80 psi applied, and then launches like a bullet. The next thing to do is polish the piston. A Scotch-Brite pad and some brake cleaner works fine. At this point, you need to inspect the piston to make sure there is no pitting or scoring. If there is, you’re through, as you can’t buy a new piston. Go buy a new caliper. For this reason, I would do this cleaning before opening the seal bag… that way you can return it if you end up needing a new caliper. I didn't have any problems with my pistons, but I read that about 20% of pistons are replaced during the rebuilding of the re-built calipers you see at AutoZone. Now you just stick the new seals in, lube them with the supplied grease, lube the piston, and install. In addition to the piston seals, you get all of the other rubber pieces including the sleeves and accordion pieces used on the slider pins, and all of the miscellaneous caps. It was all pretty easy to install. I would say I spent about 30 minutes per caliper, with about 20 minutes of that being cleaning. YRMV
The next step was installation. Boisking came over last Friday night, and helped me through it. We swapped in the 4 rebuilt calipers, installed the new-used rear 1.8 rotors, and installed new HPS pads on all four corners. He then taught me how to flush/ bleed the brakes without one of those fancy bleeder caps that the east-siders have spoiled me with. Everything went great, and I am now enjoying my new brakes.
At some point in the next year, I will probably get another rebuild kit (this time from Mazdaspeed for even cheaper) and rebuild the 1.6 brakes that I removed so I can use them on the Westfield.
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