Michael,
As Shawn pointed out, a C clamp works well. Years ago when I owned an early
Honda Accord with a brake caliper piston that sometimes liked to stick I could
pull over, remove the caliper, use the C clamp to push the piston back from
where it was stuck and put everything back together in under 10 minutes, even
with a very hot wheel, rotor,etc. I was too poor to buy a caliper for a couple
weeks.
As for the other question, my uneducated guess would be that they are not the
separated so that a failure with the front or rear lines will still leave you
the opposite brakes working.
Aaron
Aaron Cropley
71 TR6 (Throttle Body Injection!)
http://www.triumphowners.com/108
Topsham, Maine
-----Original Message-----
From: SamuelsMA@aol.com
To: 6pack@autox.team.net
Sent: Sat, 2 Sep 2006 7:06 PM
Subject: brake fluid (2)
Listers:
I posted some questions a few days ago about changing my brake fluid.
Thanks to all for your responses. The process was very similar to changing
the
fluid on my Porsche, which is required before every track event, so it was
familiar to me.
The project did throw me one curve ball, however, and perhaps someone could
give me some insight. I was bleeding the right rear wheel cylinder, and all
of this ugly old fluid (looked like dilute pea soup!) was coming out. Then,
I started getting air bubbles and the pedal lost resistance, as if the
reservoir had run dry. But the reservoir was still full of ugly old brake
fluid.
Then I noticed there there was a small front reservoir compartment that did
not appear to communicate with the larger rear compartment. I deduced that
this section is dedicated to the rear brakes, while the larger rear section is
for the front brakes. So I filled the rear section with fresh fluid and had
my son pump until the bubbles were gone and the new fluid came through. We
did the same with the left rear wheel, but I checked frequently to make sure
that the small front reservoir never emptied out fully. Then we did the right
front and left front wheels, which took quite a while to clear out the pea
soup. By the end, there was clear fluid (Castrol) coming out of both front
calipers and the brake pedal felt fine.
My question is: Is the small front reservoir section supposed to
communicate with the larger rear section, but mine is plugged? Or are the
sections
supposed to be separate? If they are supposed to be separate, why? On my
Porsche and on my son's Jetta, there is just one compartment for both front
and
rear.
A second question: I put in new Green Stuff pads today. I retracted the
pistons by opening the bleed valve and using Vice Grips. Worked fine, but the
teeth on the Vice Grips look like they could really damage the caliper seals.
They didn't, but there must be a better method. Ideas?
Thanks as always.
Michael
'76 Tahiti Blue
CF 57044U
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