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I am having some issues with my rear brake calipers and wanted to see if there were any 'brake guys' on here to give some advice. I am going to do a brake job on my 2004 MT Rx8 and decided to have a spare set of rear calipers powdercoated to fit whilst I was at it.
I dissasembled the calipers and seal etc in preperation, but when I got the calipers back from being blasted and powdercoated I have found that there is (I assume) some sort of primer aswell as dirt from the blasting althrough the caliper internals. Its to the point that one of the bores for the brake line was clogged shut with the crap, and needed a small screwdriver to dislodge it.
I am obviously going to try to clean them as best as I can, but if even a small amount of dirt remains can they be safely used? Im worried it will just contaminate the system and screw everything.
Does anyone know how to remove the park brake mechanism? I cant find any reference in any of the Mazda docs.
The oil gallery brushes are a good idea, but I think the caliper bores are too contaminated to get 100% of the grit out of them. Do you know how to remove the park brake mechanism from the rear calipers Team? I cant find a reference for it anywhere, and I think pulling it out of the bore will be my only chance of cleaning it all out.
I would jump at the core exchange/rebuild option if it were available in my, but the cost of shipping back and forth is prohibitive.
You can use a brake honing tool to get the cylinder back to where it's supposed to be, but this will most likely widen the cylinder slightly so that the seals on the piston won't seal as well. I don't think that this would cause a whole lot of an issue, but it is something I would warn of.
I had a carb media blasted a few months ago...don't do that either, huge mistake. Live and learn.
Thanks for the suggestion mate. I ended up getting a brake shop to pull the handbrake mechanism out and clean it out as I couldn't find a method to do it myself. All worked out well and I was able to rebuild the caliper.
I think you could probably hone the bore safely, as the seal sits in a recess of the bore itself rather than on the piston so material behind the seal would be safe to remove slightly. Anyways, all's well that ends well.