I was hoping when I rebuilt the suspension that the brakes were ok. Well they looked ok, and the car seemed to brake fine so I didn’t think I needed to do anything to them until the winter. Well, turns out that they were a little less than perfect and caused an MOT fail!
According to the Brake test, there was a 46% difference between NSF and OSF, whcih was a bit of an issue! I am a little unsurprised though as during the suspension rebuild, suspending a caliper on cable ties and occasionally knocking it off was more than likely to have upset a 15 year old braided hose! The fix was simple, rebuild both callipers with new seals and pistons, put new brake lines on, and flush the whole system.
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First up was a “Bigg Red” Calliper rebuild kit, cheaper than expected, coming in at £27 delivered! This gave me a new set of seals and a new piston for each calliper. The pistons that came out were pitted so a rebuild kit that included pistons was key. While the callipers were apart is was an ideal time to spray them with my favourite Auto-K Calliper paint, so I set about doing that. While the wife was out one day, I took advantage of the oven and decided to cure the paint to 200c (needed for the paint to harden) off the car and before I rebuilt everything.
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Before paint, I put the pad carrier in a vice and filed smooth all the pad glide surfaces to remove many years of corrosion and paint. After I painted them again, I removed the overspray with a file on this area and before putting the pads in coated the entire slide area in copper grease.
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The new braided lines were supplied by GBS through Kit Spares, and again, were great value for money. A full set (4 lines) was around £60 delivered, which considering they were branded Goodridge and very high quality, is excellent Value for Money. I have only installed the front lines for now as the rear callipers were fine, but i’ll do the rear end in the winter!
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The brake fluid was old and had lots of corrosion in it. When I flushed the system through the furthest calliper tons of black floaty bits came out. I am pretty sure this fluid had been in the car for several years! It took about 1.5l of fluid to fully flush & bleed the system, but boy was it worth it.
The final product went back together very easily and an MOT retest showed perfect front brake bias so I cant argue with that! Another job I wasn’t expecting ticked off!