Brake Rebuilds, When, What and How much?
 

While trying to do my cheap brake maintance on our project RX7, we ran into some problems. Me and my Hulking weapons known as arms sheared off the head of one of the rear caliper bolts.

SOOOO, I went from just needing new pads, to now needs new rotors and after messing up the boot trying to get pads in, now I need a new boot.

But while under the car messing with the brakes, something seemed really clunky about the rear calipers. They were ungodly hard to press the piston back into the caliper, even with both bleed screws out and the line cracked..it was amazing, and somewhat frustrating.

I checked the fronts breifly and noticed that the front left caliper brake doesnt drag at all, where as the opposite side does...so something is wrong there too.

My question is:

Do I need a brake caliper rebuild kit?

Can I just replace the boot and grease up the pistons for better movement of the brakes?

How much are brake rebuild kits? Per wheel? per set?

Is there any way of getting the brakes to work well without rebuilding, and how do I know if my brakes are working correctly or not? I mean...if they stop...they stop...and if they dont, they obviously are not working. Mine stop...just not incredibly good considering 4-pot front calipers.

Any help?

Come on peeps...someone has got to know something about this.

Ok...since nothing happened in this thread, I went ahead and ripped apart a caliper myself.

Outter sear is pretty straight foward. Inner part goes down, outter goes around outside of piston and clips on with a little springing ring.

Caliper half's came apart with just a little muscle...no broken bolts.

Pried out pistons, cleaned out calipers and chambers.

Cleaned up pistons. Lubed.

Reinsertion was wierd...the one just seemed like it didnt want to move. I tried everything to make it go in and out easier.

Turned out it was only really stiff while the piston was in the hole half way, once it was in, it moved a good 1/4 or 1/2 inch in and odd just as easily as the rest.

While my brake pistons may not exactly move without the help of a pair of channel locks, they move much more freely then they did before.

Seals were reused and looked fine.

I think i'll repeat this on all four calipers.

Front or rear caliper rebuild?
 

Was this a front or read caliper? The rear is involved with the emergency brake. My right rear caliper is occationally sticking and I either have to do a rebuild or buy a new one. I've seen the kits for < $20 including shipping whil rebuilt ones are $112 plus.