questions on rebuilding rear calipers

[CSVT#49]

So I've got new seals for the rear calipers. I have them all installed, but now that I'm going to reinstall the park brake lever arm I can not get the piston plunger to drop low enough to slide the arm in over the small cam tab (for lack of a better word). It looks like you almost have to manually compress it some how as the flat spring washers are most likely the majority of the problem. However I can't see a real good way to compress them. Has anyone rebuilt the rear calipers before? Blufuz perhaps can chime in? I'm assuming you tore them down for powder coating at some point.

 

[blu_fuz]

What you are doing right now is exactly why I stopped breaking down rear calipers that far for powdercoating. You can get it all back together but you will probably marr up the powdercoating a little.

You need to take a big channel locks pliars to it and compress that spring down far enough to slide the ebrake lever in and get your cam wedge back in place.

I never tried it with the piston in, so I don't know if you did that yet.

Cover the piston hole lip with cloth/rag/towel to protect it from the pliars jaws. Put the fixed 1/2 of the jaws on the piston hole lip. Take the ajustable jaw of the pliars and get it to just catch the edge of the washer on that spring and give it a little squeeze with you hand and you will see the spring compress. You can weasle the ebrake arm and cam wedge back in by yourself but having another person to help would be awesome.


If I had a caliper here I would show you, but I don't :-/

 

[CSVT#49]

Right on. I just wanted to make sure that was the right way to do it. I plan to make a U shaped plate and use my large C-clamp to compress it. Doing it that way I wont damage the powder coating and I'll be able to slide the wedge and arm in by myself. I just wasn't sure if I should be beating on those springs that much. I suppose I could push the piston out as well and try it without it.

 

[blu_fuz]

The problem with the C-clamp is that it will slide off that washer. I think I tried that way and there just isn't enough surface area for the C-clamp with the round shape. The channel locks is quick. Line it up, give it a squeeze, slide the lever over with the wedge in place, and through the other hole to hold the lever.


You can powder coat the calipers with the entire e-brake lever mech still in place. Just make sure you hang it while coating/baking with the lever side down and mask the area where the rubber grease/dust boot would have covered the mech and entire lever. Hanging it this way the ebrake mech grease that heats up will just blob down into the oven. Put a layer of foil on the oven floor to catch the blob of grease. You are baking for such a short time (15-20 mins) the hot-hot heat never gets to the seal where the piston pin goes through the back side of the caliper body.

 

[CSVT#49]

Well the only way to install the park brake arm is with the piston out. Unfortunately for me I had already installed it on the driver side. So while I was able to blow the piston out and install it I couldn't get the piston back in with the boot around it. I ended up ripping it trying to. However I was able to used a thinner C-clap to push the assembly down quite easily. What I did was use a thin piece of sheet metal to span the opening of the piston and then just put the clamp end over the raised side of where the wedge sat. I was quite impressed with how smooth it went and it also didn't mess up my powder coat work either.