What causes a caliper to go bad? I went to get my front brakes replaced and my driver side caliper is messed up. It is very hard to push the piston in. We got it to push in, and everything was fine, until I was halfway home and it started pulling and my steering wheel started vibrating a little. When I got home that side of the wheel was smoking. About 3-4 months ago, I got my rear brakes replaced and the ds rear caliper was messed up also. My Prelude is now starting to get on my last nerve, but what can I expect? It has 203,000 miles on it, so I should be happy it is still going. How much is this going to cost me to fix??

 

New caliper will probably run you about 100 w/ a core charge. Autozone or advance auto parts (or a similar store) can probably get them for you if you don't wanna pay a dealer premium cost. They're also easy to replace.

 

So the calipers were working fine before you started working on them??

If so, maybe you need to bleed your brake system some more.

 

I was doing a routine brake changing job on my car when I realized that the DS pads were like almost to the metal vs the other side with about 30% left. Then when I went to push the piston in it wouldn't go in. I finally got it to go in, but after driving for awhile it had a burning smell and was smoking so I figured that the piston was sticking so I replaced it.

 

you can rebuild the pistons on brake calipers. i did it on all four calipers when i had my 300zx. it was hell to do it on that car.