It was time to disassemble a set of brakes from a SII 330GT I’m restoring. They’re in pretty rough shape, so I had my work cut out for me. Rebuilding brakes used to be simple, where I would have boxed these up, sent them to a brake rebuilder, and they would have come back cleaned, but because there aren’t many places I trust are going to do things the way I want, and are willing to do the whole job, so I’m doing most of the work myself.

The brakes were pretty corroded, but most of the fasteners came out without much persuasion.

I didn’t get away cleanly, as a couple bleeder screws were seized beyond removal from the piston bodies. I tried heating the parts cherry red to break the rust free, but they fitting simply sheared off when I applied any force. The only solution was to drill out the bleeder screw. This was one of the main reasons I bought a Bridgeport milling machine a few years ago so I could drill accurate holes in situations like this.

There was such satisfaction when an accurate hole that was drilled by the Bridgeport allowed me to pull out the seized threads without damaging the mating threads in the caliper piston.

I disassembled the brakes and ended up with this pile of chaos!

The next step was the laborious task of de-greasing, and bead blasting the rust off the brake parts.

Now that the brakes were stripped, it was time to send them out for White Cadmium plating. This process is getting harder to find a shop that will do it, and it seems to be getting more expensive every time I send out a batch, but it is what it is. In the past, my brake rebuilder would have it done before he re-sleeved the caliper pistons, but now the brake guy I use only does sleeving, so the plating has to be done separately before sending the pistons out for stainless sleeves. After they return, I will have to install the seals and boots to reassemble the brakes! It’s a lot of extra steps, but it’s what rebuilding brakes has become in a diminishing world of industry!

Here’s a video of the process of breaking apart the brakes. Check out my other videos on my YouTube Channel.