Rear Caliper Rebuild?

[LHAYES]

I just finished rebuilding my front calipers (frozen up from sitting to long) and now they actually function as designed. Since the front ones were full of corrosion I have to believe that the rear ones are in just as bad a shape. Has anyone one out there tackled a rear caliper rebuild with success? So far all the manuals suggest that you buy new ones rather than rebuild your old ones. Pelican sells rebuild kits but cautions that "they may not work since they are missing a key seal". That makes me wonder if this is a doable project.

[Jim Osborn]

I have rebuilt my rear calipers on my 914. It was simple and the seal that is missing is the parking brake seal and I didn't even take apart the assebly from the caliper. I even sand blasted the calipers and painted them.

...but the parking brake seal is usually the one that fails...don't ask me how I know...

[LHAYES]

Jim, I have a few questions about the procedure, do you have an e-mail address?

[Alpine]

I have read on the Rennlist mailing list that the rear caliper rebuild kits that GPR
( http://www.********.com ) sells has all the seals that you will need.

Alpine

[rich]

I disassembled my rear calipers for cleaning and rebuild. I purchased kits from one of the after market guy's. I don't remember who I got them from. (before pelican) The O rings for the pistons was too small. I ended up reusing the original O rings. Becareful disassembling the calipers. If they were working fine when the car was put in storage chances are you may get by just cleaning things up. Good luck

[Jim Philpot]

I have been through the rebuilding process and found it to be a simple operation. The kits I bought had all necessary seals.

The main thing I noticed is that the proper adjustment and operation of the parking brake
hinges on making sure that the threads of the adjustment screws are free to turn in their mating parts. As I recall, if the threads tend to bind in the pistons, no adjustment can be made.

I think it's worth the trouble simply to understand how the parking brake works.(It's amazing to me that the adjustment portion actually seals!) The biggest pain I went through was making sure the parking brake was properly adjusted after the rebuild was complete. I read somewhere that the Factory never made rebuild parts readily available because they were afraid DIYers wouldn't be able to accomplish proper adjustment. Like so many stories, this is probably a bunch of BS, however.

[LHAYES]

Gentlemen, thank you for the valuable input. My next question is how do you dismantle the caliper? My assumption is that the adjusters must somehow be disengaged before the pistons can be blown out with compressed air as I did with the front calipers. However, it doesn't look like the adjusting screws come all the way out... any insight would be appreciated.

[Jim Philpot]

As I recall, you must remove the locknut and the circlip on the end of the adjusting screw, after which you can push the adjusting screw and the piston out through the bore of the cylinder. It's been well over a year since I rebuilt mine, so I've forgotten a lot of the procedure.