Well, this is interesting. I’ll be looking more into this tomorrow when I have more time, but the caliper replacement went way better than I expected… until the end.
Old caliper came right off. I was expecting to have to do a lot more persuasion on the mounting bolts and brake line nut than I had to. Everything loosened up nicely. Oh, and the caliper is seriously locked up. Couldn’t move the pistons at all, at least by hand.
Assembled the new pads in the new caliper, and slid it into place. Holding it in place, there was just a little clearance between the pads and the rotor… perfect! My troubles are solved, right? Well, not so fast. I inserted the bolts and tightened them finger tight… and the rotor wouldn’t turn. Scratched my head over this for a bit… checked the pads, not dragging. In fact they were rattling around a bit. Looked further into it and the outside edge of the caliper is tight against the rotor. Huh?
So I looked at it from the front, and I see that the rotor is not even close to being centered in the caliper. Well, that’s no good. Took it apart and put it together a couple of times, just to be sure I had it right (sheesh, it’s not that complicated) but all with the same result.
So, tomorrow I do a little more playing with it. Thinking about it, it’s not an issue with adding spacers to the caliper bolts because that will make it worse… it needs to move in the other direction, and obviously it can’t because it’s already tight against the mounting surface. Or, the rotor needs to move inward…?
Wondering if maybe it’s not a stock rotor? Too thick maybe? I’d guess it at about 3/8″ which from what I’ve seen in other posts sounds about right. Or maybe the mounting surface (didn’t peek back there) is bent somehow? I’ll be taking some very careful measurements tomorrow to investigate if there are any differences between the two calipers that would cause this, but I would guess that there is about 1/4″ of clearance between the caliper frame on the inside edge, and none at all (tight against the rotor) on the outside edge.
Really confused. More info after sleeping on it and looking at it again.