Rebuilt my rear calipers today because the right rear was leaking brake fluid into the Parking Brake dust cover and noticed that the caliper on that side had no grease under the rubber cover, whereas the caliper on the other side was filled with an orange-ish heavy grease.

On reassembly, I greased the roller bearings and all of the contact points for the parking brake mechanism (cam pivots, spring, etc.) and was curious how much grease should normally be in there?

I assume the leaking brake fluid washed out all the grease from the non-working Parking Brake (right rear) boot area and that's why there wasn't any grease on that side. Also replaced by rear wheel bearings and collars while I had it all apart.

Original rear Parking Brake seals (the one tiny O-ring on the parking brake piston) made it 224k miles - which I was impressed by that. I rebuilt the main piston seals and put new dust boots on at about 140k miles...

Thanks for any tips,

 

both of mine are packed full on my rear brakes. I don't know if that is the correct way to do it, but they seem to be working correctly.

 

pack em full!!!

 

Nothing to hurt by packing them full.

Must be nice living in the desert. Rear calipers are lucky to last two years on cars driven four seasons up here. The pins sieze up and it's generally cheaper/easier to get reman calipers instead of fighting them, unless you have a home acid bath and cad plating kit.

 

Did mine last year,like others have said,fill them with grease,new boot &spring clamp. The grease besides lubricating keeps moisture from getting to the parts that need protection. One of mine on disassembly had more grease than other but never looked to have had moisture in the one with less grease..fill er up.

 

I think that may be a good bet. The roller bearings on both were just fine, even the dry one - so I'm thinking it's likely more important if you live in rainy/salty/snowy areas where you need to protect any exposed metal. Here in the desert, I don't have that risk, though.

With the NLA status of -SE brake calipers (rebuild only), I'm thinking the more I do to preserve the parts I have, the better off I'll be.

Thanks to all,

 

Yup, I get like 2 years out of mine too. it sucks, and rear GSL-SE caliper brackets are NLA.

You can't even order new caliper pins for the rears.

 

What kind of grease do you guys recommend?

 

Thick bodied grease,first thing comes to mind..CV joint grease that you pack into joint after cleaning. Comes in a small plastic bag in a reboot kit,certain you could find a bag by itself at any auto parts store. Depending on size of bag(large,get one,small get two) one large would do both calipers likely. When i overhauled mine,I was lucky to get a complete overhaul kit for both parts of rear calipers and it came with two bags of grease,same orange grease i removed on teardown and cleaning.

 

I rebuilt mine last summer and packed them relatively full of grease on reassembly.