The challenge in keeping up with the blog is remembering to take pictures of stuff so I have something to show you.
Remember our 2005 VW Golf TDI?
Pictured here at ChowdaQ in 2016 this is the car I've owned the longest. Actually it might be in the running for the vehicle I've owned the longest. I think I got it in 2015.
So the old Golf is hard on brakes, especially the rears. I've posted a bunch of times about doing brakes on that car. One of the things special about brakes on a newer VW is that the rear calipers need to be twisted as the piston retracts. An easy(ish) way to do that is with a tool like this:
And I've done it several times now, the tool quickly pays for itself and I don't think it was terribly expensive.
The problem is that every time I've done the brakes on this car I've ended up with terrible pedal feel and the parking brake didn't work well.
Recently the pedal started to pulse badly during braking so I knew it was time for yet another brake job. Fortunately the parts aren't too expensive so I ordered up new pads and rotors all around. At the same time I knew I'd have to address the parking brake which didn't work at all.
After finishing the brake job I knew I was in trouble, pedal feel was AWFUL. Pedal goes straight to the floor. I know what you're thinking "air in the lines" but I hadn't opened the system so where would the air have come from? Plus the parking brake didn't work at all.
So, since I'd never done it I figured I'd replace the parking brake cables. Not a terrible job and they're weren't too expensive. Sadly, after the job was done nothing had changed. So I decided to sleep on it for a couple nights.
Well, theres the problem. Sure, right. Let me explain...
What we're seeing here is the rear of the passenger side caliper. At the bottom left of the picture there is a pair of vice grips attached to the parking brake actuator. The actuator is fully extended in this picture, so its bottomed out but isn't causing the brake pad to contact the rotor.
When I retracted the piston I retracted it all the way so the new pads would clear. In doing so I've retracted the piston too much so the piston isn't moving enough to do its job. Disc brakes are self adjusting so eventually the piston would adjust itself but commonly the adjuster gets a little stuck. I could actually see that in the parking brake actuator, it didn't retract well. A little squirt of oil helped. I cycled the parking brake a couple hundred (no joke) times but it just wasn't adjusting, or at least not enough to matter.
Heres the fix, you're looking at the caliper standing on its side. The cube thing inside the caliper has little nubs on it to engage the piston. Normally to retract the piston you turn it clockwise while pushing it in. The other tool won't work for that since you need to turn counter-clockwise which would also retract the tool.
Here my thumb is pushing down on the cube thing while I turn it with a big screwdriver. It takes a lot of force but fortunately it only needs to move like 1/8 of a turn.
This was all terribly difficult to photograph so please excuse the terrible pictures. I wanted to get the calipers balanced so I set them so the pads just touch the rotor when the jaw is open about 1/4" which is just under half the travel. In retrospect I'd probably go a little smaller, maybe 3/16 or about 1/3 of the travel.
With all that done pedal feel is MUCH improved and the parking brake finally works as it should.
The state of MA requires a yearly safety inspection. The parking brake was keeping me from getting it. Annoyingly these days they give you a sticker for the month your previous sticker expired so although I had it inspected in May I got an April sticker. Oh well...
