Brian911

Quick question:

On my 80 SC, without having touched the breaks yet, how many pistons are there in the caliper?

Jeff Curtis

TWO pistons, each caliper. One on each side.

Have fun "renewing" your brakes.

Bill Gregory

If you are going to rebuild your calipers, there have been several discussions on the forums, and there are some articles around that detail how to do it. Rebuild kits for SC brakes consist of an inner seal and outer seal for each piston, and they're not expensive, maybe $15/caliper. Not difficult to do, a little messy. You'll need a torque wrench to tighten up the caliper bolts when you reinstall them. When you put everything back together, if your pistons are set fairly far into the caliper, ie, the piston face is even with the inner face of the caliper, that probably means your pads will slide in real easily and won't tighten right up to the rotor. Initially, after bleeding your brakes, it may feel like you have a long pedal travel. This goes away after 100 miles or so when the pistons have wiggled themselves out to take out the slack you left. To the extent that you can minimize that slack, you reduce the initial panic over a long pedal, wondering what you messed up.

You did say you were going to rebuild your calipers didn't you

Brian911

Bill-

No I was not going to rebuild them yet. My friend asked me how many pistons and I could not answer that. He now has a 968 after fragging an 89 944s2. He was quiet pissed that I did not know because I used to be able to answer all his questions when I was a chevy guy. Going to Porsche, I don't want to speak out on any subject unless I have concrete evidence. Thank you though for answering the question so thoroughly. I print these out so I can reference them in the future.

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