Me again! Since buying my bike almost a year ago the rear brake has been very dodgy. It was dragging so I just disconnected it until I got a chance to rebuild it.
Now I've gotten around to rebuilding it, and let's just say that 50k miles and minimal maintenance from the PO has not been kind to it. I already replaced the rear disc, and have new pads waiting to put in, but I'm having problems with the caliper.
First the pistons were stuck. I bought a grease gun and pumped grease through, got one of the pistons to move, but even after blocking it off the other piston still won't move.
Now I've got the caliper split and the bleed nipple on the stuck piston side was so corroded that it sheared off while I was trying to loosen it. I then tried a bolt extractor, which also sheared off inside the nipple. I've been trying to drill out the nipple but the tool steel used on the bolt extractor is too hard. I've managed to dig into it some using a carbide bit on my die grinder.
All said I've put in about 3 hours on this brake and haven't accomplished much. I looked on eBay at replacements but everything is over $100, which is way more than I want to spend for a beat up, used, 20 year old brake caliper.
Anyway - I've got 2 questions. First - Do I need to free up this other bleed nipple if I've got 1 working bleed nipple? Not sure why there are 2 there.
Second - Are there other rear calipers that I could swap in? I saw someone mentioned a Seca 900 or YZF 1000, but other than that haven't seen much info on anyone doing this.
Thanks!
