Rebuilt Calipers - Pins, What's the issue? 30648017

[oragex]

I did use silicone grease but noticed that on winter days the grease was getting thicker and sticky. On several forums there are discussions about silicone grease brands with some negative feedback. The SIL-GLYDE one seems to cause the least issues (Napa sells it under it's brand). I'm about to clean the grease off the pins and drive with no grease at all.

When replacing the pins, it's a good practice to remove the rubber boot where the pin sits, and sand all rust inside the metal hole where the rubber is inserted. Then use some silicone grease inside the hole before putting back the rubber boot. This rust pushes on the boot and causes the pin to be too tight when it slides.

[benpineapple]

Unless you used the wrong hex head and stripped the pin, there's truly no need to get rid of them or replace them. Very easy to resurface. Mine were a little rusty towards the outside. I sanded them down nice and clean, cleaned them with mineral spirits, lubed, replaced. This was 9mo ago, they still look good as new.

[theWIFES_S70]

Meant to upload these a while back. I stuck with the OEM pins because the hex heads seemed to be in better shape than the torx heads. Here they are side-by-side. I didn't notice any real difference in their weight. They were exactly the same length too. I just felt too much play in the Torx heads to warrant keeping them, whereas the hex heads still felt great. These were out of remanufactured Cardone calipers.

[abscate]

Bump, added part number To thread

[abscate]

Update SEP 2019

If you search the part number, you will find that the pin quality of the rebuilds basically is sub par. My S70 lockedup both calipersdue to corroded aftermarket pins, which are poor quality stainless steel

One of the reasons the rebuilds are so cheap are the cheap pins.

Save your OEM pins

Compare the rebuilt caliper price after adding in real pins to the Volvo caliper, not the pin to caliper price.

[FireFox31]

Maybe this is why all of my rebuilt calipers keep failing, but my one original caliper does not. I'm about to tear all the calipers apart and inspect them once and for all. Thanks for this tip.

[abscate]

erik and jreed were the guys who first exposed this, kudos to them.

Important note - as you follow these threads, back in 2014, the rebuilders used good pins. In the never ending chase to the lowest price, at some point, they started using cheap crappy magnetic steel which corrodes and also has lousy six point hardware fittings - if you compare chinesium to OEM you can see the difference in workmanship.

I have no desire to spend an afternoon drilling out (a) stripped caliper pin(s)

The junky pins can be cleaned up and heavily lubed and will work, just add them to your annual inspection list (and even cheapskate me will replace them with the real thing rather than remove my calipers every year.)

[erikv11]

When an OEM caliper gets stuck/sticky, it is either due to dry pins (which can also get gunky but will clean right up with a brush and solvent) or a frozen piston.

The factory pins are basically never bad it seems - what abscate said, save those OEM caliper pins!

[FireFox31]

OEM pins might be Torx as well, so don't immediately toss them. In April 2014, I had a Volvo dealership install front right caliper part 8111102. This is a rebuilt caliper. I assume it came with new pins which they used. While working on it last night, I noticed that the hex socket corners were rounded, though not as much as the one theWIFES_S70 posted. I used a Torx T45 bit to remove them.

Regarding the debate to lube the pins or not, my pins had barely any grease on them. They slid smoothly yet firmly out of the caliper boots. I will only use a tiny amount of Sil-Glyde on them in the future.

[erikv11]

There is a debate whether or not to lube the pins??? I've seen a few dry ones that would barely move, then moved freely once lubed with Sil-glide, enough to convince me there is no debate.