brianwarner983

so i was going to replace the rotors and pads in the back of my 87 today, and found something not so exciting.
on the right side, both the bolts holding the caliper to the knuckle (not sure if that is the right term) were broken off. so needless to say i had no way to get the rotor off. has this ever happened to anyone? should i just look for another knuckle? or if i manage to remove it, could the bolts be drilled out?
thanks everybody!

Napsterfreak15

you could literally brake the rotor by hitting it with a large hammer and take the caliper off that way. then you could replace the rotor and caliper. I had to do that once

Rocking Rotary

iTrader: (14)

Dude I forgot to tell you about that on the car when you picked it up. You wont be able to get either side off becouse of the poor maintance done on it over the years. Last time some one had the calipers off they didnt antisieze the bolt and since the hubs are aluminum and the bolts are steel you have this amazing corossion that almost never gives way. It actually happens pretty offten on these cars any were it snows.

Well there are a few ways go can go about fixing this. You could use a hammer and brake up the rotor. But not the ways I would go about things when a car is on jack stands.

I would remove the three bolts the hold the hub to the controll arm and disconnect the brake line and parking brake cable.
You may have some trouble with the one on the underside of the hub. It is for the verticale steering bushing and they like to seize inside the metal sleave in the bushing. I would replace it with the mazdatrix bushings anyway just to make sure you dont have any future promblems.
When you get the hub off you can either go get a set of hubs that are know to be good or try to rebuild the ones you have. Which if you choose the later you will have to brake the rotor and pull the caliper off but It may be a problem getting the caliper bolts out of the hub. Also I think those calipers had to be bleed out of the line becouse the bleeders were broke off.

If you really wanted to do a bang up job since you have the hubs off your could replace the bearings as well.
Let me know if you need any help or have any ?'s

brianwarner983

well, the left side of the car isnt as bad. i was able to get it apart just fine. and on the right side, i can get the piston part of the caliper off without issues, just the other bracket part has the broken bolts. i was thinking of taking the whole hub off and bringing it to a machine shop to have the bolts extracted or drilled out. otherwise i will be looking for another hub.