Originally Posted by prof

^^ What he said ^^

I'm about to do this on my front calipers - some pics would be nice. This looks similar to the write up on rotorwiki - but again no pics

BTW - Hi Mark

Originally Posted by vaughnc

Assuming you’re done, if not this info may be redundant:

A few thoughts:

You need to hone out the cylinders to remove any scratches & prevent pre-mature failure, don't skip this step. Autozone or any auto supply store sells the tool.



If you pull apart the front calipers, you will need the o-ring that seals the brake fluid passage during re-assembly. I THINK you're SUPPOSE to use o-rings that are brake fluid safe, but I just used some generic ones out of my o-ring kit.

You WILL break bolts when disassembling the front calipers. To prevent this I'd soak the calipers in penetrating oil for 2-3 days if you have the time and use an impact gun when removing the bolts (low torque setting). Mazda stocks the bolts, so go ahead and order 2-3 beforehand to save some grief. You might need a machine shop to drill out any broken bolts & cleanup the hole threads. If you have a drill press you can do this yourself.

Besides sandblasting you can use a scrub pad with dish detergent/soap to clean the greese & dirt, and a drill with a wire-wheel brush to cleanup the rust film. A dremel with cone & flat wire brushes will work wonders as well.

You don't need air to pop-out the front brake pistons, there is a specialty tool that uses the piston grooves to "lever action" them out. Of course if the caliper is disassembled then use a flathead screwdriver and lightly pry in a circular pattern until it pops out.

Now's a good time to sand blast (or scrub n clean) and paint those front & rear A arms, dust shield, etc.. They sell "brake caliper spraypaint", but I just used high-temp engine spraypaint. You can paint the MAZDA logo a different color than the rest of the caliper for some additional bling appeal.

Bleeding is a royal pain. Installing speed bleeders would help. Also they sell a temporary add-on brake fluid reservoir so you don't have to keep re-filling the stock one. I went through 3 bottles of fluid before getting the air out, and that was with the "suck it out" style bleeding pump and pressing the brake pedal to bleed air out of the master cylinder.


I noticed that too, but I'm not sure if that's "US Standard steering wheel on left" or some other standard.