Rear caliper piston seized

[OR-Zman]

I paid $180 for a rear set of rear loaded calipers from NAPA. Fronts are much less..about half.

[SATAN]

And how much to turn a drum or a rotor? bout what 10-20 bucks depending on where you go right?

[84z31]

i never bother getting my rotors turned. they are cheap enough i just buy new ones insted.

i tried pushing my pistons back in with a c-clamp. but they wouldn't go. so i took it off and noticed the notches on the piston. i grabbed a pair of needle nose plyers and turned them back in.

i think my eclipse i had about 9 years ago had the same thing in the rear.

[GotFast?]

A lot of manufactures will use twist style rear calipers with vehicles that have an integral parking brake with the caliper. (They wont use twist style on vehicles with drumparking/disc braking usually)

Don't rebuild your own calipers. For what the cost is of getting new calipers it just isnt worth the liability. Your brakes are the most important thing on your vehicle remember.

ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS resurface (or if at min thickness replace) brake rotors when doing a brake job. If the rotor is at all glazed and you dont resurface the new pads will never seat properly.

While you have it all apart, if you have a die grinder use a slightly abrasive pad on the hub to remove any rust. Also on the rotor, if resurfacing, remove any rust that it on the hub side. It also helps to remove rust thats on the side the wheel comes in contact with. This helps prevent brake pulsation.

[300zxt]

Yeah, it's my own stupid fault for trying to be a cheap ass. It's just that I'm moving in a month and funds are tight right now and I was hoping that I'd get away with new pads only.

Im not going to drive it much at all for the moment and get the rear rotors machined and replace the caliper seals just incase. I can feel the brakes getting better each time I drive it though, the fronts are perfect it's just the rears which is strange to me because usually the fronts go bad first as they obviously do most of the braking. It looks like my 88T has only had the fronts attended to. I havent had the car for that long at all and the pads in there still had alot of thickness left but the pads in the front were extremely shit, the brake dust build up was just stupid as I'd have to clean the wheels every damn week.

My plan is to basically pull the rear calipers again and replace all of the piston seals, remachine the rear rotors and hope for the best. Lesson learnt I guess, it's kinda funny that I've never had to replace the rears before so in all honesty it was a rookie mistake. I've done 3 sets of front pads and rotors before, but the rear sets in each of my Z's have always been fine. I only hope that I didnt screw up the calipers themselves by forcing the pistons in. Now that I think of it, as I was trying to compress the rear piston it was turning as I was doing so and it only moved about a 1/4 of an inch so I could be lucky. I'm monitoring my brake fluid level anally but it doesnt appear to be going down any so they could be ok. I did a handbrake test though while driving and it didnt stop quickly at all so it's either not tight enough or I fucked up the calipers.

[SATAN]

Go pull you ebrake HARD and see if any fluid comes out of the rear anywhere.

[OR-Zman]

SATAN wrote: Go pull you ebrake HARD and see if any fluid comes out of the rear anywhere.

Could work but I think the e-brake is a mechanical not hydraulic application of the caliper. Could work though.

Also pump the crap out of the brakes without the e-brake. Jacking the back end up and pulling of the wheel may be a good idea to get a good view as well.

Believe me the last thing you want is a brake leaking out the fluid on you when you don't actually realize it. Or suddenly getting worse in your case. Happened to me last summer. One of my "new" rear calipers took a shit when I hit the brakes hard due to an idiot pulling out in front of me. 30 minutes later I needed some serious braking again and it just wasnt there. :shock: It wasnt a fun scenario but I was able to drive through it luckly. I was over 90 miles from home and had to dump a couple pints of fluid into the system just to make it home semi safely with brakes. I drove most of the way with a hand on the e-brake just in case.

Stopping ability should always come before go fast ability in my book. Just be damn careful man.

[300zxt]

Well the fluid level in the reservoir hasn't budged, so I could be lucky. The car has been driven a few times since aswell so it doesn't appear to be going down. I didn't notice anything out of the ordinaty by using the e-brake, no fluid leakage etc but it doesn't stop the car very quickly so I think the cable needs tightening further. Im getting the rotors machined on thursday and getting the whole system inspected by a friend who's a professional mechanic just to be on the safe side.

[Chris86NA2T]

300zxt wrote: Haha, well Nissan quoted me $227 for front brake pads. I got a set of Bendix pads for $104 for the front, and $87 for the rear. In Australian dollars but still a helluva lot so SATAN tells me. They're kickass pads though, but still...

if the australian dollar was only worth $0.50 American that would still be a rip off.

[ShamWow]

300zxt wrote: It sounds like when your pads are worn, that scuffing kind of sound as the wheel rotates each time it makes a full turn. I also noticed that the pads in the rear were the wrong kind, they had a slot in the middle of them. The ones I got which I triple checked were right for an 88 Turbo do not have this slot. I think the old pads in the rear were for an NA as the part numbers had the same first few digits but the last few were different...
From my experience, certain pad have slots and others dont. The slots are there to act as a discharge chute for hot brake gases that could otherwise cause pad float under hard braking. Not all pads use these slots. If the pads you have are the right size and shape, they will work just fine. However i dont know if you will want to use them. Brake pad selection is very debatable, and some will argue the negative aspect of the reduction in surface area that the slots cause.

GotFast? wrote: Don't rebuild your own calipers. For what the cost is of getting new calipers it just isnt worth the liability. Your brakes are the most important thing on your vehicle remember.

Rebuilding calipers is cheap, simple and effective for any DIY'er. Yes, brakes are very important to your vehicle, but they dont require a Phd to service them. I would suggest looking into getting a rebuild kit, and saving yourself some cash.

[zmech]

z

[Jason84NA2T]

[quote]Mike_GruiZinga wrote:

It sounds like when your pads are worn, that scuffing kind of sound as the wheel rotates each time it makes a full turn. I also noticed that the pads in the rear were the wrong kind, they had a slot in the middle of them. The ones I got which I triple checked were right for an 88 Turbo do not have this slot. I think the old pads in the rear were for an NA as the part numbers had the same first few digits but the last few were different...
From my experience, certain pad have slots and others dont. The slots are there to act as a discharge chute for hot brake gases that could otherwise cause pad float under hard braking. Not all pads use these slots. If the pads you have are the right size and shape, they will work just fine. However i dont know if you will want to use them. Brake pad selection is very debatable, and some will argue the negative aspect of the reduction in surface area that the slots cause.

You're mostly right Mike... but brake linings are designed with slots and chamfers for reasons besides material outgassing as well. In fact, some pads outgas so little that slots or drilled/slotted rotors will decrease dry performance because of the reduction in friction area. It depends on the formulation of the resin in the friction material. The slot effectively makes the pad into two pads, raising the resonant frequency of each by roughly half and putting it outside of the human hearing range. On some cars, the fix for customers complaining of brake noise was to simply remove the pads and cut a slot into them with a hacksaw (not kidding, this is a toyota factory TSB).

Disc brake noise is the #1 NVH complaint in the auto industry. A lot of the engineering goes into not reducing noise (which is hard to do) but raising it to a pitch which humans can't hear. Ever wonder why dogs chase cars?

[Jason84NA2T]

[quote]Chris86NA2T wrote:

Haha, well Nissan quoted me $227 for front brake pads. I got a set of Bendix pads for $104 for the front, and $87 for the rear. In Australian dollars but still a helluva lot so SATAN tells me. They're kickass pads though, but still...
if the australian dollar was only worth $0.50 American that would still be a rip off.

Bendix makes high quality pads which always exceed OEM's in testing. AU $200 (~ $150 us?) for a full set of good brake pads might seem like a lot compared to parts store prices, but I would probably go through three sets of cheap, and less "safe" pads before his bendix pads were worn out.

[300zxt]

Yeah, there were others which did seem a bit too cheap for my liking.

Anyway regarding the brakes I got them working much nicer, although the sound in the rear doesn't appear to have gone away yet so I'm hoping it's just the pads embedding in again.

I got the front and rear rotors machined and realized I needed new front caliper seals, not rear as one caliper up the front was a bit damp. If you thought the price for pads was expensive, then how does $188 for a front caliper seal kit sound? lol Only one place even had them, and I was lucky to find them in the first place and they knew it. I got them next-day delivery from Sydney which is 600 miles away.

Anyway got them all in and once the pads got worn in a bit braking feels real good but the damn sound in the rear hasn't gone away yet. I'm gonna give it a bit, as I said above hopefully it's just the pads embedding again due to the remachined rotors but the car is at least stopping much better now.