Replacement seals for 97 Fiesta/ Puma brakes

[Miffy84]

Hi all

I drive a 1997 mk4 Fiesta 1.4 Zetec. I believe these share the front brakes (calipers and vented rotors) with the Puma as well, am i right?

Anyway, the passenger side front caliper seized with about 50k on the clocks due to a degraded seal around the piston. Perfectly normal and quite common on these models according to my friendly local ford dealership. Unfortunately it wrote of the disc and pads so had to have all of them changed too. 10k later, the other side seized up too, fortunately the night before the MOT and without killing the disc, so no hassle replacing it.

The car is now on 84k, and I've just fitted some new discs and pads, and while the calipers were off, i noticed the drivers side seal has gone again. This seems strange as its the newer of the pair and has only done around 25k. Is this normal? If not, anything I can do to prolong the life of the seals? If they're this flimsy, are there any better quality seals that can be fitted?

Smithy