AE86 brakes

[orange32]

Howdy.

Today I was attempting to replace my front suspension with some coilovers that i bought second hand. Being the retard that I am, I forgot one of the top spring seats when I went to pick it up. Not disheartened, I decided to fit one on, to make sure everything went on fine. When i was re-fitting the caliper onto the brake rotor, silly me forgot to put wood between the pads to keep them apart. So a mate and I decided that bleeding the fluid out would be a super idea and would solve our problem.

So I loosened the bleed nipple on the caliper and had my mate push the brake pedal in and out to get all of the fluid out of them system to refit the caliper when all of a sudden we heard something drop from the other side of the car. Stupid me forgot about the other calpier not having having a rotor to bite onto and the piston from inside the caliper has found its way out and onto the floor. I have tried to put it back in many different ways but none have worked as yet.

Does anyone know the proper way to refit the piston?
Should i just take it to a brake shop and have them do it?
Is there anything that could possible have been damaged in the caliper from my stupidity?

Sorry I don't have any pics, I can take some tomorrow if anyone is interested.


Thanks for reading, any advice is appreciated.

Cheers
zac

[mech`s blue]

haha

i've done that before... if in doubt take it to the brake mobs. they should be able to refit it for you cheap enough. they can put a new seal and boot on it.

its not worth messing bout with your brakes if you don know what your doing cause it's not just your life your screwing with

[slide86]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Mech`s Blue @ Jan 6 2008, 02:20 AM) </div>
so true. just take it to a brake place. it should take one of them 5 mins to fix

[ke70dave]

hey man, i copied this from the ae86 manual, might give you a bit of an idea

edit: your explanation was quite amusing to read, and you explained everything very well! ppl should write tech questions like this more often..

[turbo_rolla]

its not THAT difficult to put the caliper back in. Depends on the condition of the seal and boot though. Just fiddly, and requires alot of grease. I just rebuilt my JDM brakes, and getting the piston in was fiddly, as it would occassionally get jammed, then had to use compressed air to pop it out :rant: If you do it yourself, grease it up (piston and inside of caliper), push the piston in a touch, pull it up slightly, then push it back in (seems like some air pressure builds up under it, and this seems to releive it, then on the second push it went in). Just push gently and wriggle it around to make sure its going in straight.

On the other hand, a brake place will be able to do this very easily and shouldnt cost too much like the other guys said :2thumbs:

[orange32]

Cheers guys.

I'll just take it to a brake joint, never really messed around with calipers before so I don't really want to mess it up.


Thanks for that diagram Dave, I think I am missing a seal or two, I'll have a hunt around and see where the rest of it went.


Cheers
Zac

[maxhag]

lol Very amusing post....

[orange32]

UPDATE:

So i took my calipers down to the local brake joint, I decided to get them rebuilt as I'm sure they needed it and will fix the piston issue as well. So i picked them up and after much screwing around, the pads are in and the caliper is bolted back onto the strut and brakes are bled and all is well.

BUT

I took it for a drive to test out the brakes and new coilovers to make sure there were no noises or problems and for some reason, now my clutch has decided to go rediculously spongy. It releases pretty much straight off the floor now and there is a rediculous amount of slack in the pedal. This may be a stupid question but are the brake and clutch lines any way connected? They worked fine before I had my brake problem and now its awful. I'll bleed the clutch tomorrow to make sure thats not the issue.

Any ideas?

[maxhag]

Brake and clutch systems are seperate......

[orange32]

yeah thats what I thought.

Just seems weird that the clutch has suddenly lost its feel.

I'll have a good look under it tomorrow and suss it out.