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I've got a pile of brake parts i need to slap on, but am not sure what to do about the calipers. They have a bit of surface rust inside the piston. My plan was to wash them with water and some sort of solvent, like clr or something, and then take off the rubber bleeder and throw them in the oven at 200 degrees for 45 minutes or so prior to install. Does this sound like the right thing to do, or am i going to eventually die from some unrelated cause?

Probably a silly question, but brakes are no joke.

I don't think you need to go through all that trouble of putting them in the oven and such. I would take the seals off and pull out the pistons and inspect the outside surface. As long as it isn't pitted or showing rust as well you should be fine. If it is only a slight surface rust you can probably hit it with some fine emory polishing cloth and then get new seals. A little bit of rust just inside the piston won't hurt anything, just sand it off and clean the piston-pad contact surface good and you should be in fine shape.

And you're right, brakes are no joke and always worth asking.

I wouldn't even worry about the rust. Almost all the older pistons I've come across have surface rust on the inside of the piston.

Cool. I'll just polish 'em up and go then.

Yeah, with brakes you're generally dealing with carbon-rich steel and cast iron rapidly heating and cooling in an oyxgen-rich environment. Surface rust is to be expected.

hopefully my brake pistons arent in an oxygen rich environment!

Well, the part exposed to the pads are, no?

Or are you talking about the sides, that face the bore?

the piston walls are where i was concerned about, they were stored with the pistons pushed out quite a bit. It came right off though, and seems to be in good shape otherwise, so im gonna just run with it.

If there was a problem you'd noticed.

skid542 wrote:If there was a problem you'd noticed.

I don't follow you.

I also can't wrap my head around your sig. What the hell does it mean?

I thought you said in your last post that you'd pulled out the pistons, if you did and there was going to be a problem I'm sure you would have noticed it, aka pitting and such. Sorry for any confusion.

My sig - "You can't beat an optimist" is a saying of mine because I'm a very optimistic person and it's pretty hard to get me down. "Never forget to smile" is just because I think not enough people in this world smile, its something small but makes a difference I think.

but it say be and not beat.

Ah geeze *slaps forehead, I try to catch my typos and such in all my posts, how have I let my sig go that long unchecked .

So does it mean that I have to smile when I'm beating an optimist?

Or, "you can't beat an optimist" and "never forget to smile" - 2 things?

It's two things.