I pulled the beast out of the garage this past weekend and noticed a couple of drops of brake fluid where it was parked. I looked under the car and could see brake fluid on the inside of the tire, and looking through the wire wheel it appears that the caliber is leaking.

How hard is it to rebuild the calibers with a kit? Rust is not an issue with this car if that makes a difference.

Thanks for your insight.

 

I don't think its too hard, but I wouldn't bother. Reman calipers are less than $50 from Rock Auto. More like $35 after the core gets returned.

 

Replace the hoses as well, a MUST DO item.

 

Personally id just go for a new/remanufactured as well, with a warranty, factory tested, nice shiny coating etc.
You never know if they have already been rebuilt once, so you might go to fit everything & find out they have been bored out slightly already or similar. Quality of aftermarket rebuild parts also seems to be a minefield.

 

Do have a very careful look first, wheel off, to see if the leak is from somewhere obvious (eg) a slightly loose bleed screw. Outside that, as everyone says above, buy a reman caliper and new hoses. If the calipers and hoses are the originals, then do that anyway, and the other side too!
But check with the Teves 2 gurus on the way to do it, this might not be too straightforward to do.

 

You'll be pleased that I already ordered the Teflon lined stainless steel braided flexible brake hoses available at SNG Barratt. When I dropped the IRS cage and replaced the brakes I used the same type of hoses. Reasonably priced and very nice upgrade.

Cheers

 

I have now rebuilt all my calliper's. Rears last years as one started leaking an involved job as you have to remove the rear cage for access. New disks at the same time. The fronts I rebuilt a few weeks ago again with new discs and stainless steel hoses. This is an easy job and very satisfying. Yes I could have put new calliper’s on the car but the old ones do recondition well being cast iron as long as the piston bores are ok and not pitted.


Before

During the rebuild

Finished

 

Lovely job, Robbo.

 

Update: I finally got the job done. I had decided that the rebuilt ones from RockAuto were so inexpensive, I would just go that route rather than rebuild them myself. Word of caution, I ordered the NUGEON units at $31.79 + core which seemed too good to pass up. Well... when I opened the boxes one caliper didn't have the seals seated correctly. Other than the delay, no problem, RockAuto sent a return label and a replacement was shipped. The replacement comes and it's worse the one sent back. I contacted RockAuto and sent them photos of the issue and asked how we could make sure the replacement had the seals correctly seated. To my surprise, they just sent a return label and said "don't order this part again, order from a different vendor." I ordered the Raybestos which were $25 more each, but the quality difference was pretty obvious.

The job itself was pretty drama free because I picked up some good tips from Greg In France and Orangeblossom from researching prior threads so I wasn't surprised when the shims fell out or befuddled by how to get them back in.

 

I think you're responsible for the cost to ship back, although you can take advatage of RockAuto's discount here...but it ends up being a wash. The core is about as much as it costs to send it back.

Either way, $50 for a (like) new caliper?

 

Correct. In my case, the Reybesto core was $16.80 each, but the shipping to return the cores was $19 something (which given how heavy the calipers are is discounted, but...).