480 Turbo rear calipers

[Steve Hogg]

Hi,
This is the first time I have looked at the rear brakes on my 480 turbo. The discs are quite rusty and the hand brake is almost non existant. Can someone explain the operation (with an exploded diagram if possible) of the handbrake components within the caliper. I suspect the caliper is siezed as I can't push the piston back, at this point I am not using to much pressure in case there is some ratchet mechanism in the caliper which needs to be released first (like on my old rover 2000TC).
Thanks for any help offered.

Steve

[jason weston]

Steve,
There is indeed a mechanism to wind the caliper back. On the inboard side of the caliper is a small cover (6mm hex?) which you have to remove, to reveal a slightly smaller hex inside. Undo this slowly, and this backs off the handbrake adjustment. If you wind it too far, theoretically the handbrake adjust fails.

The haynes manual has a picture, but doesn't mention the cover, so I spent a fruitless 5 minutes trying to back the caliper off by undoing the cover bolt!

Once you have backed the caliper off, it all becomes easy, and your 2000 TC will have been good training!

Good luck, Jason

[Steve Hogg]

Jason,
Thanks, I suspected as much. I will let you know how it goes. Once that's done I will turn my attention to the front brakes.
Steve

[ChrisB]

They are rather poor, mine are the same. A good service to free them up should sort it. Also there should be rubber boots over the exposed section of the handbrake cable, these perish and fall off. They are cheap from volvo and easy to change. Some WD40/copper grease on the handbrake cable improved things a bit.