Hi-

I placed a piece of wood and used a c clamp to push in the front caliper in. The caliper is in most of the way. There still is some room. The boot is partially inside the caliper but most of it is hanging outside the caliper. The boot is not torn or ripped. My concern is that when I place the caliper down that the boot will be torn. Any advice?

 

Did you open up the master cylinder before pressing the caliper in ? You can try lightly pressing the caliper back out using the brake pedal. I'm afraid the caliper is bad 'though. If you're going to use it again make sure that thing is not going to leak.

I assume you're not talking about the two sliding pins ?

 

No I did not open the master cylinder. I checked the brake fluid and it is well above full but there still was some room for more fluid. I put the brakes back together and then I pushed down on the pedal to move the cylinder back out. Then I opened the master cylinder reservoir (this is were I removed some fluid) and attempted to push the cylinder back into the caliper. This time the dust cover boot folded up and was not bulging out as much. The dust boot still was not fully folded. So I did the same procedure again. I cleaned things up a bit more. It looks better but 1/4 of the dust boot is still buldging. Any thoughts?

btw - There is some surface rust on the piston. There is not rust that I can see where the boot is. The rust is on the part the is exposed outside.

 

Before you push the brake caliper back in you need to open the master cylinder to help the fluid go backwards. Fluid will go back up the master cylinder from the caliper. You should not need to ever remove fluid or add fluid since the master cylinder is an indicator of pad life. When it gets low your pads are in need of replacing.

 

You can get another caliper from the junkyard cheap. Don't take any chances with that one being bad or tearing while driving. It sounds like it will. Just go get another. When you remove that one to put the new one on, just use a pair of vice grips to gently crimp the line down while you open the system to put the newer caliper on, that way as little of fluid will flow out as possible. Then bleed the brake line. This would be a good time to simply bleed the entire system, at the very least from the master cylinder to that particular caliper, if not flushing to every caliper/wheel. When I bleed I like to try to open and close the bleeder valve very fast on the last one so that I catch the brake pedal before it hits the ground. This ensures that no extra fluid comes out which ensures that no air gets in at the very end of the valve. There are youtube videos showing how to bleed brakes if you haven't done it before.