How to: Remove Stuck Caliper Pistons

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This How-to describes a process for removing a stuck/seized caliper piston.

Article originally written by 'Full Circle':

I've spent the last few nights working on that seized rear caliper, neither piston would budge. Finally got them to pop this morning before we left for my sisters 50th birthday party. I think it was Tuesday or Wednesday when I pulled them, this weeks been a bit of a blur. I started with compressed air, no go so i soaked them in blaster and let them sit until yesterday afternoon. Tried the compressed air again and still no joy. I came in last night and started searching the net. Found a couple ideas, mostly involving some kind of penetrating oil, torches and compressed air, and then I came across this video

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Figured, worse case scenario, big mess to clean up. Now I have to apologize because i never bothered taking "before" pics. Seems like when I get frustrated by something, I don't think about stopping to take pics.

Anyways, I cleaned out all the penetrating oil, and tried one more time with the compressor, again, no joy. I happened to have a bag of grease nipples from an old sled project. As luck would have it, they were the right size. I took out a bleeder, replaced it with the nipple and then started searching for a bolt to fill in the banjo bolt hole. For future reference, if anyone is going to try this, the caliper mounting bolts are the perfect thread size, just too long, so if you use one, don't bolt it in too tight.

Here's the set up, and the second pic is after they popped:
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The pistons were burried all the way back in the bore, so you can imagine how happy i was when they started to move:

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From start to finish it was about 15 minutes, about 5 of which was pumping grease. Big cleanup to do now, and i orderd a new seal kit off Ebay. Rear Caliper Seals I couldn't believe how cheap they were, everyone else was around $40 or $50, even local dealers.


The threads on the bleeder are m7 x 1.0, good to know for the grease nipple size.

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