jb78L-82

Not a fan of the mass retailers like autozone and Advanced Auto unless you are in a bind....yes they will honor their warranty on parts but quality is very questionable. Have a friend that repairs totaled Volvos for resale for a living and he told me the story of sourcing his steering racks from Advanced and did about 10 R&P replacements with lifetime warranty and every one either leaked when installed or shortly there after...all replaced under warranty time and again...he finally gave up and found another source for the Volvo racks.

I just yesterday got a dose of my own advice on brakes. 2008 Chrysler 300 3.5 V6 with on going rear brake caliper piston sticking issues...one caliper. Problem surfaced about 50,000 miles on OEM rotor and pads....overheating rotor and pad under normal driving. Replaced rear rotors and pads.. cleaned crud from around rear caliper piston seal...All good until 105K when replaced rotor and pads again...Caliper piston again periodically would stick...cracked replacement rotor from heat within 8,000 miles. Replaced rotor again with high carbon steel Centric rear 12 inch solid rotor and cleaned/greased caliper....made sure pad floated in bracket. Checked problem rotor yesterday.. pad wearing much faster than the good rear caliper after 21,000 miles...still dragging and scoring my $80 Centric rotor. Now I am fed up! Ordered from Rockauto powder red coated Hemi caliper/bracket (I converted the front brakes to Hemi V8 14 inch rotor with dual piston floating caliper about 2 years ago...awesome braking now) for the 12 inch rear VENTED Hemi rotor versus the 3.5L 12 inch rear solid rotors. The Centric high carbon rotors/ 2 powdered coated red Hemi calipers and brackets, and another set of Performance Friction pads cost me $450..ouch! I probably could have replaced the one caliper, 1 rotor, and new pads for $200 but fed up. Hoping to do the conversion this weekend.

Moral of the story...you MUST find the problem to solve brake issues with any car...they generally do not just go away on their own.

Procrastination Racing

This is very important to know and understand. I bought CORVETTE AMERICA stainless steel calipers years ago when they were being touted as "lifetime" and the last calipers you'd ever need to put on a Corvette, like Muskegon Brakes and Vette Brakes & Products. A local Corvette parts shop had the CORVETTE AMERICA calipers in stock, so it was take them home and put them on. running the same day.

Then they began to leak. I've replaced seals a couple of times and they start leaking again, so at the NCRS Winter Regional at Old Town a few years ago, I asked the CORVETTE AMERICA guy about replacing them on warranty.

He wouldn't exchange them. I had to ship them to him, he would send them to his guy, that guy would decide if they would handle it on warranty or not, and then they would either ship me new ones or my old ones back. I'd probably have to BUY the new ones.

I had to pay shipping both ways. The car would be down for a long time.

I asked about the lifetime warranty.

His comment was something like Did you want them to last forever?


Well, YES, that is why I paid so much for them back then. But reading the warranty cards again after all these years, they definitely are NOT lifetime warranty, although they pushed them as that back then. Stainless steel sleeves and silicone brake fluid would solve all of your braking problems.




Corvette America Brake Caliper Warranty


This is how AutoZone, Advance Auto, and O'Reilly's handle their lifetime warranties. No one is qualified at the counter to determine what is wrong, so they just replace them. No questions asked. That is how it should be.


That is pretty much how I feel anymore. They are all going to leak sometime. It is the nature of the lip seal caliper, they will eventually not seal. This especially happens if the car sits, like those who store over the winter.

And these Corvette vendors aren't covering that. So if I have to pull them off to put seals in, I'd rather just pull them off, run over to the local auto parts, drop four on the counter, pick up four new ones, and run them again for a few years.




Corvette America Brake Caliper Warranty


Look at it this way, AutoZone, Advance Auto, and O'Reilly do not make their own, they buy them from a vendor. That vendor could easily be any of the Corvette vendors you see at a Corvette show.

If you are like many, you keep your Corvette for a few years and sell/trade/whatever in which case, the quality of the brakes is insignificant for the long term.

If you do keep them for the long term, knowing they will leak regardless of who makes them, you might as well get truly free replacements that you can get in almost any city in America instead of shipping them off, hoping they agree with you, and send you free replacements a week or so later.

jb78L-82

As stated previously, corvette SS calipers will not just leak after some time frame (4 years) if functioning properly and the brake fluid changed every 2/3/4 years. I as well as others I know have 10/20/30+ years on SS calipers with no issues on their C3's. My current caliper car set on my 78 were installed in 1985!!! Find the problem.....

derekderek

If the caliper leaks, where else could the problem be?

cagotzmann

The problem is the current version of rebuilt calipers.
My LoneStar version of the calipers (2011) 3 of the 5 failed. Run out of the rotors ~.000??? almost perfect on all wheels. My dial gauge cannot read a .001 run out. Pads are replaced once half worn. So whats left. I bleed my brakes before every track day. 4-5 times a year. Then it sits for 6-7 months. The car is started / moved once a month during storage.
You seem to be one of the lucky ones and a few others but overall stats show none of the rebuilt calipers are as good as the GM Factory installed units. The newer the rebuild the more likely they seem to fail. The older the rebuild and they still are working the more likely they will continue to work provided your brake system is maintained / functioning properly. Replacing the brake fluid / rotor run out / replace pads MUST be done to keep them working leak free.

jb78L-82

You might be right that the newer rebuilt SS calipers are not built to the same standards as the OEM delcos or the older SS rebuilt calipers like mine. If I am not mistaken, there is a vendor that sells NEW SS calipers...wonder if that might help the issue?

cagotzmann

I have a set from Mid America sold as new from Lone Star. They advertise the same warranty as other corvette vendors "Life Time" small print limited to the casting and the SS sleeve leaking by the casting. They did replace 1 unit under warranty after 2 years and would not replace the replacement unit which leaked again after 6 months or replace the next unit that as leaked after 3 years. They did send me rebuild kits after months of complaining about the misleading advertising "life time". I now have replaced the OEM's with wilwoods D8-4 units. Lets see if these are any better.

I will be selling the OEM's to recover costs. Hopfully someone will have better success rebuilding these units better than the companies that make the units as "NEW". I don't know how they can sell as "NEW" with the same delco moraine stamp on them ?

redvetracr

thats a simple one...they pay the GM lawyers a licensing fee

redvetracr

not counting the new Delco-Moraine "made in China" calipers there were three different series of calipers, 546, 545 & 547, if you look at some 545 castings (the ones used from 67-72 maybe 73) you will see some are also marked armorsteel or something very close to that, I read somewhere they were cast from a better grade of material than the 547 castings. maybe the new Chinese castings are made from crappy material or maybe the lip seals (also probably made in China) are made from crappy rubber.

Procrastination Racing

The calipers leak for a variety of reasons. The first big one is cars that sit. Cars that are driven daily or even weekly tend to do well, even in the original era of cast iron calipers of the '70s when the SS brakes first started. Driving them keeps seals pressed tight with fluid, keep them hot to keep moisture out, and have the seals move so they don't take a "set" from sitting.

While the stainless steel sleeve prevents rust, and thus the points where pockets form to allow fluid to seep by, the dust seals on the outer part still press into a cast iron groove which can rust. This allows junk to get on the sleeves which works its way past the lip seal and can wear the lip seal so it leaks.

The aluminum pistons can corrode and do. First the dust seal groove in the piston will start to leak, allowing dirt, moisture, and whatever to get in. Then you repeat the erosion of the lip seal again.

While most thought the corrosion issue was the cast iron piston bores in the caliper and so stainless sleeves would cure it, the aluminum pistons also frequently corrode and leak.

If you really drive your car hard, the brakes can get unbelievably hot, which heat cycle the seals until they don't really seal.

As long as the pistons slide in and out straight, you can keep a seal, but pistons can **** slightly to the side. It was a consideration, which is why the original design for '65 and '66 had a centering cylinder to stabilize the piston with a small stem. It was too costly and considering they were only warranting the car for 12,000 miles/12 months, it was removed so there is a single bore and the piston stays stable enough in most uses to not be an issue.





1965 - 1966 first design caliper piston


Believe it or not, DOT 5 silicone brake fluid is compressible. It is slight and within safe limits for street use but was discovered quickly in the '70s by road racers that it would expand with heat, contract back when cooled, and pull air past the seals. On a race car, it could be obvious in a lap or two. On a street car, this can be so slight, you may never notice for months.





Second design piston bore, single bore

427Hotrod

I installed a set of Muskegon stainless sleeved calipers on mine back in about 1995 or so. Paid $300 for four calipers, pads, all hoses, stainless steel lines on rears, master cylinder and 2 bottles of Dot5 fluid. Those things worked great and never leaked a drop until I pulled them off a couple of years ago to install a Wilwood setup as part of a magazine project. I gave them to a buddy and he's going to install them on his. Interestingly the pad wear was amazing considering the miles I put on them and the drag strip passes hauling it down from 140+. They still had half the lining left when I took them off.

JIM

bmans vette

Jim,

Would you buy Muskegon or Wilwood today?

And if car is in the 500+ hp range would you go with a larger rotor?

Txs
Bman

427Hotrod

Sort of depends on what you're doing. The stock Vette brakes do an excellent job of braking when in decent condition. I did a bunch of testing between the stock and the Wilwoods during the magazine article. Th link isn't working on-line anymore so I can't get it to you.

Here's a couple of threads....

https://www.corvetteforum.com/forums...d-upgrade.html

https://www.corvetteforum.com/forums...e-upgrade.html

If you're going to rebuild stock calipers and have to pay to ship them both ways then the pricing for Wilwoods gets more attractive. They DO stop better...seemed to be more controllable. They've been great with no issues.

For 500 HP and normal use and normal size tires...the stock stuff works well. Even with big tires you can juggle pads and get even more stopping power. I don't think the larger rotor will make much difference unless you're going to put real sticky tires on it. The stock Vette system is way better than anything else built in the 60-70's and most of the 80's...the tires are a huge component of the package.

JIM