I just got the calipers for my Alpine back from the machine shop.
I had them remove what was left of the bleeder screws, and give
the bores a light honing to get rid of the rust. When I showed
up to collect them, the guy who did the work proudly pointed out
that he'd parted the caliper halves -- an act that I had neither
requested nor expected, but live and learn I guess.
My service manual uses a pretty frightening tone when warning about
disassembling the calipers. It says that one should never part the
halves. Torque figures are given for the "bridge bolts" in case
one needs to part and reassemble them for some reason, but it says
that the rejoined parts should be returned to the factory as soon
as possible thereafter for servicing.
So, a few questions: First, what's the big deal about taking the
halves apart and putting them back together? Why are they so con-
cerned about it?
Second, there's a small round rubber seal where the fluid passages
from the separate halves meet. It's clear that intense heat was
used to remove the bleeder remnants, and the seals were pretty close
to the point of application. They seem ok, but should I replace
them anyway? I guess my concern is that there's something special
about them that would make them difficult to source. (Again, that
manual's got me spooked now...) They've got a rectangular cross
section, but could I get away with a suitable O-ring as a replacement?
Finally, they specify that the bridge bolts should be clean and dry
before reassembly, but I'd always been told to lightly oil fasteners
that needed to be set to precise torque settings to make sure that
the torque was really a measure of the fastening force instead of
just resistance due to thread friction. Should I oil these bolts
or not?
Any advice would be appreciated!
Thanks in advance,
Brad (aka richards@cs.wisc.edu)
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