Brake Caliper "Grub Screw"

[TheMule]

Hey All,

I'm attempting to replace my badly worn rear brake pads, something I anticipated would be an easy job. However, the "grub screw" covering the brake pad pin is frozen solid. Any suggestions, I'd really like not to strip the darn thing. Torch??

thanks,

[Mustang]

don't use a torch , unless you want to boil your brake fluid and ruin your piston seals in the caliper .

Drill and easy outs are going to be your solution , been there done that .

When you finally get it all apart , replace the pad pin set as triumph calls it and coat the threads with 'never sieze'



 
http://www.neverseezproducts.com/antiseize.htm

[matttys]

Mine was all bunged up too.  Ended up using lots of chlorinated penetrants and an impact screw driver to get it out.  I must have spent an hour on that beast.

[Sin_Tiger]

I know this doesn't immediately help you but there is a supplier in the UK who has stainless pins that I think should fit the rear caliper, common problem?

If it is I might as well order with the other stuff I am getting from him next week.

http://www.triumphparts.gbr.cc/70231/info.php?p=2&pno=0&pid=1596936&cat=34955&ack=9&search=&sought=

[TheMule]

Well,

I went with Mustang's course of action and got the grub screw out but ran out of time to tackle the pin itself which is of course as immovable as the grub screw was. Sprayed it up good with penetrating oil and will work on it tomorrow. I ordered 3 "pin sets" from bikebandit which will likely get here sometime in August if my past history ordering triumph stuff thru them holds true. I'm going to have to make a real effort to keep the pin intact or my trip in a week will be real exciting without rear brakes.

thanks for the suggestions,

Todd

[TheMule]

Wow,

Everytime I check out this site someone is having a bad time removing the tank or difficulty with the cooling system. Those things went without a hitch and were not any trouble at all when I tackled them. However, replacing the rear brake pads turned into a nightmare..........we all have our crosses to bear apparently. First the grub screw was frozen solid, lots of that white aluminum corrosion in the threads, and I had to drill it out completely and use a larger torx bit to get it out. Took too many hours to mention. Then the brake pad pin was welded into place as well. Tried drilling that out and using an easyout and broke the easyout off in the head of the pin............bad deal! Drill bits don't like to work thier way thru broken easyouts. I then sprayed everything down with penetrating oil and gave it a day. I next tried a pair of visegrips on the body of the pin with no luck. I was about to weld a short length of rod to the body of the pin and decided to try a 6" pipe wrench. That broke the pin free and I used a pair of channel locks the rest of the way. Of course by this time the pin was chewed up pretty good so I took a file to it and cleaned it up as best I could (my new pin kits haven't even mailed yet). Re-installed everything, using anti-seize, and ended up using a 10mm 1.0 grease fitting for a "grub screw" because it was the closest thing the hardware store had.  

So, taking off the tank, checking the valves, flushing and filling the coolant, synching the FI, and putting in new plugs took about 6 hours. Replacing the rear brake pads..................4 days (at about 3.5 hours per day, most of that cussing). Oh-well the bike is now ready for the trip and the packing is commencing.

thanks,

[Bixxer Bob]

Tried drilling that out and using an easyout and broke the easyout off in the head of the pin............bad deal! Drill bits don't like to work thier way thru broken easyouts. .......

Top tips after the fact aren't much use but here goes anyway; easy outs only work if the bolt, stud etc broke under tension - ie something was over tightened.  If the original bolt / stud broke because it was corroded in place the easy out will break as well because:

1.  By the time you've drilled to get it in you're using less diameter than the original bolt.
2.  It's made of harder material so it'll dig into the remains of the bolt.
3.  Harder = more brittle, it's a structure thing.  What you really need is more tensile strength to resist the twisting, but hard things don't do twisting and it's very difficult to make a tensile thing hard as well.

Many years ago, an aircraft technician (= more pay than me - a lowly workshop tech) brought me a Harrier tail plane pivot shaft.  He'd drilled it,  broke the drill,  used an easy out,  broke the easy out,  cobalt drilled it,  broke the cobalt drill and then asked "Can you get this out for me - it's worth thousands of pounds and I'm without a paddle if you can't".  I said "You should've brought it to me when you first f****d up, not when it was completedly f****d.  Leave it with me".  It took me 3 days with a home-made spark erosion machine to clean it out.  Got free beer for a month off that one....