[How To] Rear caliper rebuild

[sbeube02]

I would like to share with you my experience in rebuilding a Probe rear caliper.
I know that buying a re-manufactured caliper on Rockauto is maybe a simple option, rebuilding a caliper is often cheaper but more time consuming.
Plus it offers the ability to be painted in a professional way in any color of your choice.
The problem I encountered with my rear calipers is the famous sticky handbrake plus a strange brake fluid leak.

The tools you will need:

• a 14 mm wrench
• a 10 mm wrench
• a 8 mm wrench
• a 6 mm hex wrench
• a 4 mm hex wrench
• a long nose clip plier
• a rebuild kit with the seal (eg. DORMAN D352735)
• some copper grease
• sand blaster
• high temp epoxy paint

First you have to have to remove the whole assembly from the car.
Here is the rusty/dirty/leaky caliper:



Remove the first slider pin with a 10 mm spanner:


Rotate the bracket and slide from the second slider pin:


Next you have to heat a lot the bracket to get the second slider pin off. It is glued with some red Loctite:


When the glue is softened, use the 6 mm Allen wrench to remove the slider pin:


Remove now the various bolt and handbrake cable support:



Turn several turns the gear to extract the most you can the piston.
Then remove the handbrake adjust gear with a 4 mm Allen wrench:


Carefully remove the handbrake lever spring:


Slide off the piston:


Remove the dust seals and rubber guides:


Now here is the tricky part. You have to remove the small clip inside the cylinder bore:



You can now extract the handbrake adjustment mechanism:


Now the hanbrake lever may be removed, just pull off:


You can see the culprit. The old dust seal leave water pass inside the caliper:


Remove with a flat screwdriver the seal and the inner seal inside the piston bore:


Now the magical part Use a sand blaster to remove all the rust of your calipers:



If you want to paint your caliper this is the right time.

[sbeube02]

This is the new seal kit with contain four seal:


Install the new seals:


Re install first the handbrake bracket followed by the adjustment mechnanism:







New boot and dust seal:


The whole re manufactured assembly:



Later, I decided to disassemble again the caliper to paint it with 2 components high temp red paint.






Picture on the car with new Brembo brake disc:

[probe,man]

clean looking probe. did the SE and base models have drum or disc brakes?

[sbeube02]

In Europe we only have the 16v model and 24v model. They share the same brake disc.

[probe,man]

but American made had drums?