Seized rear caliper piston

[tim0409]

I normally pride myself on keeping my cars/bikes well maintained, but this has well and truly slipped through the net

I’m truly ashamed!

It’s a 2019 Skoda Scala with 45k miles; the rear discs and pads were mentioned as an advisory on the last MOT and I promptly bought replacements then forgot about it as we have had quite a lot going on. I decided to change them today and was appalled at what I found. In addition to the pads being completely worn and the discs knackered, the caliper piston is seized. I tried to wind it back in with the proper tool but it wasn’t going anywhere so I’ve taken it off the car with a view to replacing it/or trying to wind it back in on the bench. I’ve recently replaced the calipers on my VW Caddy and they were really cheap, but replacements for the Skoda are unusually expensive. I’ve seen some refurbishment kits but I’ve never attempted this before. Is it worth tackling or should I just bite the bulled and replace the caliper?

Thanks in advance.

[tim0409]

cuprabob said:

I'm surprised a replacement caliper is expensive as I'm pretty sure it will be a standard part used across many other models across the VAG range.

The original is TRW and coming in around £140, which is a bit more than I was expecting -

[tim0409]

Thanks Phil, it’s a manual handbrake. I’ve tried a local factor and they can’t supply them so will have another look online as they gave me the part numbers. I might need to bite the bullet and just replace them with whoever has them as I need to get the car back on the road.

[tim0409]

Okay, this is embarrassing but here goes….

I took the other caliper off and it also appeared to be seized. Had the replacements been easily available I would probably have bought them immediately and fitted them but when I went to bed I was thinking things through and came to the conclusion that it would be unlikely both were seized on a relatively new car and that I must be doing something stupid. I’ve never worked on a car with wind back calipers and my caliper tool set comes with two bodies. I then wondered if I was winding them the wrong way….and that was exactly what I was doing. I had picked up the LH wind back tool instead of the RH. What an idiot! All back together and working perfectly. The car has suffered an intermittent “chuffing” noise for months and I was absolutely convinced it was coming from the front o/s but it must have been the rear brakes because that has also gone, which is a result.

The only other issue is a creaking/squeaking noise (rear) whilst going over bumps, which is worse in cold weather. It has a torsion beam set up on the rear, and I have read that applying some silicone spray to the bushes/mountings should help. Does this sound right?

[tim0409]

TwinKam said:

Don't say I didn't tell ya!

That was my second mistake…not reading your helpful post properly!

[tim0409]

It’s not unfortunately; I did check! The one you show has a big coil/spring on it, which the Scala caliper doesn’t have.