I was road racing on Monday and over heated my front brakes pretty bad. I even ran out of pad thus screwing up my rotors as well. But when replacing the dead pads with new ones I had a caliper pistion jump out of the caliper and all my fluid drained out of the brake system.

Upon inspecting the area around the pistons I found all of my seals to be crispy or missing. My questions are:

1. Does this look like its in need of a rebuild kit?
2. Where would I get one and do they make upgraded kits?
3. What do I have to do to get all the air out of the brake system now that it has been drained?

I snapped some pics of the problem area:

 

Wow that is bad! I would think you could get a brembo rebuild kit from them or through other oems

 

Yes, I would say they need a rebuild. I just did a quick search for Brembo rebuild kit and found this. It says it's for the STI and I'm not sure they have the same calipers but, the individual selling them might know.

http://froogle.google.com/froogle?q=...oogle&ct=title

Be prepared to bleed them for quite a while and go through some fluid. A good vacuum bleeder would be nice. You may be able to just open the bleeders and let them gravity bleed for a while and get a good amount of the air out then use some type of vacuum/pressure bleeder to finish up.

You may want to find some way to duct air to those things.

 

if you have air bubbles up in the ABS system be prepared to bleed them about 4X to get them all out. The best way i've found to bleed them is the old-fashioned way. put pressure on the pedal, crack the bleeder, pedal goes to the floor, tighten the bleeder, let pedal up, every 3rd or 4th time add fluid, repeat...

Done in this order if I'm not mistaken: Left Rear, Right Rear, Left Front, Right Front.

After all the air bubbles are out, pump up the brakes, drive around, then mash on the brakes to activate the ABS a few times. Bubbles will get out of the ABS system and into the lines. Go repeat the above procedure again and again until the brake pedal is no longer mushy after activating ABS.

 

^^ sounds like a pain in the ***

 

Well I have a power bleeder so I'll get some cheap fluid and go to town on them. Glad to hear I wont need to replace anything other than the caliper parts.

There must be an upgrade available..... anyone.

 

I think there is a trick to using a power bleeder. Maybe keep the car running or something? Friend of mine tried to use it and it didn't bleed a damn thing, but I was glad because I don't trust them. Seems like they would suck a bit of the fluid at the end and make air bubbles there.

 

For clarification, the crispy parts are not the seals, they are the dust boots. The actual seals reside in a circumferential groove cut inside the brake caliper cylinder where the piston sits. When you put the piston back in, make sure its clean, lubricate it with some brake fluid and put it back in. You will need to bleed your brakes completely to get all the air out. fwiw, Works reccomends bleeding in the following order: RR, LF, LR, RF.

You think your dust boots look bad? Mine cracked away and fell off last season. I wish mine looked as good as yours! :-) The replacement part is available through mitsubishi. I get my stuff from Norco Mitsubishi (do a google search) - usually have parts like this in stock and have good prices. Anyway, its called a "front brake seal kit" - part# MR407375. They list for $118 per caliper, I paid $89. Kit comes with a dust boot and seal for each piston. Do some searching on doing the work yourself, I had a hard time finding anyone who would rebuild the calipers for me. A couple of shops claimed liability issues. good luck!

 

Especially if you track your car, brake fluid is the last thing you want to cheap-out on. Get some ATE super blue or motul. You can get ATE for like $11 per litre.

 

that is the correct order. and get some speed bleeders, it makes life a lot easier. and doesn't require three people to safely bleed.

 

it might be a good idea to use the cheap stuff at first to get all the air out of the ABS system, and then once you know it's good, go back and put in somethine better...

i think the order from worst to best (wet and dry boiling point) is:

ATE SuperBlue
Motul RBF600
Castrol SRF

 

We run SRF in our racecars. It is pretty expensive though.

When bleeding you want to start with the wheel farthest from the master and work your way closer. So the people who said RR, LR, RF, LF are correct by the book but, it wouldn't be the end of the world if got them a little mixed up.

 

I go furthest from the ABS manifold since that's where all the trouble is, which is on the FR.

 

Good point, I didn't really think about that. I'm used to bleeding racecars which is much simpler without the ABS.

 

As I'm thinking about it, with most of the bubbles coming from the ABS manifold, it seems one would use less fluid if they started flushing the closest corner then worked their way further out. Just a wild guess, but using conventional thinking may be backwards in this particular case. As a matter of fact, I wonder if there is an easy way to crack open one of those hard lines and flush the damn manifold before you ever start on the calipers. That would be ideal IMHO.