A few months ago, I bought all new brake parts for my re-build project in preparation for that part of the job. Shortly after getting them, I developed a problem with my passenger side front caliper so I used the new one to repair the issue, thinking I'd just swap it to the new frame when the time came. Yesterday I went to do that and discovered the new caliper had been leaking, the paint was stripped off the pads and caliper, and the back of the wheel was a caked up mess. We live on a gravel road so the dust from the road was gathering in the brake fluid, caking up on the back of the rim, and not dripping on the garage floor. Consequently, I was fat, dumb, and happy thinking I had fixed the brake problem when, in reality, I had a problem I was unaware of. I assumed the seals were leaking, took the caliper off, put it on the work bench, and began investigating. To my great surprise, the bolts that hold the caliper halves together were snugged down, but had never been torqued. They are supposed to be torqued at 130 which takes a pretty good pull to break loose. These came loose with very little effort and, once they were apart, I could see where the "O" rings between the halves had not been able to do their job and fluid had been forced past them every time I used the brakes. In all my years of working on my own cars, that was a new one on me. I've since checked the rest of the calipers and they are all torqued correctly. Since the project isn't to the point of being able to use them, I caught it in time to avoid issues with the new chassis, but now I've got to take this one back to the parts store and see if they'll do anything about it. Chances are, I'll never install another caliper without checking torque on those bolts. I don't know if anyone else has experienced this so I figured I'd share my pain.
defective brake caliper..........
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Upon further inspection, I'm sort of leaning toward cleaning up and re-painting the halves, replacing the "O" rings, and putting the thing back together. The pistons and seals have only been in use a few months on a car that doesn't see that much use and I'm thinking those parts are designed to be in contact with brake fluid so they may not be damaged from this. This, of course, is only being considered if the parts store won't take care of it. However, is there any reason this won't work if they don't?
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I had similar issues with calipers for a while. I finallly figured out if I go out to my vette every couple of weeks and start it up and let it run and push on the brake pedal a few times it keeps the caliper seal from leaking. They don't like sitting for long periods of time unused
Cars are a lot like houses. Houses that aren't lived in for years at a time will just fall apart. Cars are the same way. Buying one with very low miles that has been parked a long time normally means lots of work getting it back in good working order. They may do OK for a while, but all those seals, O rings, and such that dried out from lack of use will begin leaking.
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