Front callipers seized

[stuart bowes]

Originally Posted by LPTJoe

not looking to get into a bun fight

lol no definitely not, I hope it didn't come across argumentative or anything, it's always interesting to read other opinions and experiences

and to be fair I DO like pizza and beer..

[oragex]

Two difficult moments when replacing a caliper
1. The flex hose is very hard to start screwing into the caliper - very fine thread that needs be perfectly aligned to start
2. During this time the master cylinder will leak and eventually it will trap air inside, same for the ABS unit, very hard to bleed. I've read you can keep the brake pedal depressed to prevent this, not fully depressed (important) but just enough to stop the fluid draining from the master by gravity.

[spannermedonky]

Figured I would have a stab at changing the front callipers at the weekend as it stopped raining, turned out to be a doddle. The only slight drama was that the nut on one of the hard lines was seized to the steel pipe so had to spin the flexy off the pipe. The flexy to hard line is a bit fiddly as its hiding behind the drop link so not easy to get spanners on.

The passenger side calliper was seized solid, it took a large G-clamp, a block of wood and a ton of effort to wind it back in. The pads were also extremely stiff in the sliders as everything was a bit rusty probably from the winter salt.
The eBay callipers (£67 a pair) seemed to fit and work a treat although I will rebuild and refit the original ATE units, for some reason I was expecting the ebay callipers to be rebuilt original units but they are in fact new Chinese callipers.

The system even bled without an issue, I did the polythene bag thing under the filler cap which limited the fluid loss, its such a good feeling to have working nipples once again!
I think a lot of people might suffer the same thing after lockdown but its an easy cheap fix.

I popped the EBC pads and discs on at the same time, crikey do these things bite! although they are not bedded in yet.
I need to tidy the paint up on the callipers now, I've bought some JCB type yellow, red is so last year.

I'll do the rears next weekend, I never like doing the whole car in one hit.
One worrying thing is the wheel nuts were not very tight at all, I torqued them to 98Nm last time I worked on the car, I think my 40 year old torque wrench needs pensioning off.

[barrybritcher]

Dude. Please check your wheel nuts asap. P2 wheels nuts need to be 140nm

[spannermedonky]

My mistake, I meant lb ft.

[barrybritcher]

Even so. Meant to be 103lb

[stuart bowes]

tight is tight. I never use a torque wrench on wheel nuts (or maybe I did that one time after I bought the torque wrench just for the novelty of it) I've got a breaker bar I use which is about 1.5 foot and I lean on it until I'm happy it's tight enough.. never once has a wheel ever come off of any of my various cars

the only wheel falling off story I know of, is my dad changed the caravan tyre once and forgot to do them up tight. woops. fortunately there is literally no more stable towing platform than a landrover. my mum didnt even notice until she happened to look in the mirror and went 'why isnt the caravan straight'

2 miles back down the road eventually found the wheel

my own most dangerous moment was when I got to the end of a long journey and realised my locking nut was still on my wheel.

how that didn't fly off and go through someone's windscreen I have NO idea. am now compulsive about checking 2 or 3 times before putting the bar back in the boot

[lynns hubby]

Another point worth a mention on the wheel nut theme, especially with alloys, check them again after a day or two of driving.
Something else worth a mention to anyone following this thread and are tackling jobs like this for the first time. Just take your time and work on one corner at a time.
Complete the task and bleed that corner before moving on to the next.
That way, if you have a problem bleeding, at least you know what corner is the problem.
I have seen far to many people go for upgraded parts, calliper's or braided hoses etc, tear everything off, replace and then find they have issues bleeding the system.
Much easier to bleed one line than several. You know you have all the air out before going on to the next one.
Its not a race when it comes to brakes.

[spannermedonky]

It does go with out saying that people should only tackle their brakes if they are 100% confident in their abilities, I don't want to make this job sound trivial, changing pads and discs are pretty straight forward but once you get into hydraulics things can easily go pear shaped, I come from a mechanic family and even so have had cars that have refused to bleed.

I like the point about bleeding each corner after working on it.

Yes definitely take your time and be methodical.

I'm pretty anal about torqueing wheel nuts so am confident I torqued them to the maximum that my old torque wrench would go up to and also try to feel that they were about right by the amount of pressure used and then go round a second time which I'm sure would take the torque pretty dam close to 103Lb ft if not more (I would imagine a torque wrench would have at least a 10% tolerance), I wonder if the front wheels getting so hot may have loosened them, I've never had this before, there was none of that familiar 'squeak'. The nuts were not dangerously loose but no where near as tight as they should have been.

I remember the local garage did these nuts up once and the only way I could get them undone was with a 3 foot pipe on the breaker bar!

I remember in my younger days torquing the head bolts on a V8 Rover (fabulous engine) I could not get the wrench to click even with a pipe on it, turned out that my dad had been using it as a hammer to try and get a starter motor to engage on a truck...DOH!

[stuart bowes]

one caveat of course, don't do the locking nut up anywhere near that tight..

obvious to most people probably. but the tyre boys don't seem to realise this and get all happy with the air gun. I stand over them and make sure they use the bar, then I take the locknut off them