By: Tom & John Lewis

The one job that I have always hated to do on my cars is removing pistons on the Ate Disc brakes. In the past, I have always used air pressure, and at times, it got pretty exciting, not to mention messy, with brake fluid everywhere. With some ideas from the forum, my son John and I rigged up a system that has turned a very unpleasant job into a "piece of cake" (almost!).

I had an old grease gun that I wasn't using anymore. We cleaned it out thoroughly and removed the grease nipple from the end. I have a swiveling vice with regular jaws and pipe jaws. We turned the vice to a horizontal position and lightly tightened the pipe jaws around the barrel of the grease gun with the hose on the bottom. Since my bridge pipes were pretty badly rusted, I took them off, sawed the line about a half inch from the fitting on both ends, and crimped the line coming from the fittings. These we used to plug the bridge pipe holes and the bleeder holes. We then split the calipers and screwed the grease gun line into the caliper inlet on one half, and used the bridge pipe inlet on the other.

We bought some inexpensive brake fluid from Walmart, and poured this into the barrel of the grease gun and left the top off. It takes very little brake fluid in the grease gun, approximately an inch or so deep. We placed the caliper in a clean plastic container, and with a few pumps of the handle, the piston was out. We then poured the brake fluid in the plastic container back into the grease gun for the next one. The fluid from the container was colored, but we thoroughly cleaned out the caliper with Brake Clean by spraying a good dose of it through each opening in the caliper and blowing it out with air. This is far easier than getting grease out of the caliper.

We are certainly not saying that this job will be a pleasure, but it is certainly far easier, cleaner, and quicker than the air pressure method.

Published by John Audette, May 4, 2005