Sunday, August 03, 2014

Brakes? They just slow you down!

I had a pretty severe shake going on with the GT wagon. After some extensive research, some expensive parts, and some exploratory surgery I determined it had a bad caliper. The GT has some big brakes for a car this size. 12.5" dia. rotors, dual piston calipers. I bought rotors, calipers, hoses (there's a recall), and some StopTech street performance pads.  Oh, and a pressurized bleeder. That thing is great. Makes bleeding brakes easy, as long as your bleeder screws don't break off. I had no issues with frozen hardware, thankfully. It was so easy, in fact, that flushed the whole system. I'm pretty sure when I poured the old fluid out of the drivers side caliper, it was about 50% water. It looked like something out of a roadside puddle. The StopTech pads require a bedding-in procedure to heat them up and cook off the resins used in the binder of the pad material and to ensure the even transfer of pad material to the rotors. This requires getting things hot. So hot the rotors started turning pretty colors. It was a fun process. The brakes seem to be working really well and no more shake. I guess I'd better clean those wheels now. Been thinking about Plasti-Dipping them... Maybe some new center caps too. Gotta go, have a good Monday.

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