Disco took a rest in the drive for a bit, brakes froze
 

Hi -

'96 discovery that sat in my driveway for about six months, due to funding issues. I will have a whole slew of questions i am sure over the next few weeks as I get her going again.

Started like a dream, new batt and first key she started right up. Went for a drive and my first surprise was the brakes straight to the floor, after some frantic pumping I got them to grab. Rears are stuck solid, the rotors are still rusty after some extended driving around town for diagnostic purposes. Left front still grabs strong, and right front does ok but there is a huge pulse that comes through the pedal from that side which leads me to believe that on one side one of the pistons is ok, one is frozen. Noise continues but lessens with release of the brake pedal.

So after getting over the shock of $700 for new calipers my question is this -
anyone rebuild their calipers successfully? Once they freeze up are they toast or what? Are there special tools for seating the seals or can you do it on a bench? If you shoot one of the pistons out with a compressor how do you seal up to get the second, third and fourth one out? And why does it say in the RAVE not to separate the two halves of the caliper? That might be handy during a rebuild.

Also - I tried to take the drive flange off so I could get the rotor off and snapped the first bolt I touched. I hardly torqued it at all and felt that sickly plastic range feeling as it gave and *tink* off it went. About a pound of blue locktite fell out of the hole with it. I am now paranoid to touch it. Can I heat it? I don't want to frazzle anything by mistake. And I'm an old volvo guy, we slather anti-seize on EVERYTHING - wtf is up with all the locktite on these friggin things????


Please any help answering some/any/all questions would be appreciated.

TIA

geek

First, I am going to say welcome to the hellish nightmare know as Rovers my friend. A select few are able to get over the Rover bug bite...the ones that you see here are the ones unable to cure the itch....LOL!

As for the calipers, I know what I would do (and not everyone would do this) and I would soak the whole lot of everything you intend to remove with lots and lots of PB Blaster. I have not had the pleasure of working on my brakes yet, but I would guess they are like any other brakes, and the slides have seized. Soak the calipers in PB too, and take it for an extremely careful drive. Let them heat up again, then come home, and soak them again. See if that frees them up.

These are all suggestions I can think of on the cheap.

Good luck!

~Aaron

Yeah if they are only frozen from sitting that short amount of time I think you could free them up.
And that $700 price tag...was that from the dealer?
You can buy them at AutoZone for under $100 each.
When it comes to brakes, I would not rebuild my own calipers or master cylinder, but thats just me.

I do not kow about Auto Zone, I think most of their stuff is made in China and I always try to avoid such.

I highly recommend Rovers North. I have used their Pro Line calipers, I replaced my rear ones due to major corrosion. Look at their website. You can get everything you need at good prices and they are specific for the Discovery. I also bought their rotor/ pad sets for both the front and rear axles and have had no issues with them at all.

Get the fitting kits that includes all the springs and clips and pins and such. I also bought new caliper mounting bolts and drive flange bolts because I did not like the looks of my old hardware. I always get new bolts/nuts for everything if possible.

They also have the wheel bearings and all the items you will need to renew the wheel bearings. There is a double lip version of the wheel bearing seal you can get for the front axle. I think it is the one for the Defender or the Range Rover Classic. The part number can be found on some other threads about the wheel bearings. You have to pull the hubs to replace the rotors and that includes pulling heel bearings. There is also a paper gasket behind the drive flange you will want to replace.

The calipers from AutoZone are rebuilt.
The same axle flange seal for the front is also for the rear.
We used RTV on mine.