One of the guide pins on one of my anchor brackets was frozen solid. I tried PB Blaster, heat and a vice but couldn't get the damn thing to break free. I'm thinking I'm gonna need a new anchor bracket, guide pin and boot and they're not too expensive from gmpartsdirect.com but does anybody have a suggestion on how to break them apart first?

Soak it for days with penetrating oil. The BEST stuff out there is Kroil, from Kano Labs. (www.kanolabs.com) This stuff will free up anything.

Anyhoo, I'd just soak it for a few days in WD-40 or Kroil and then give it another shot. Put more oil on it every day.

Ed

That would probably work. Unfortunately, the car is my daily driver to school and work. No can do.

You get the thing unfrozen yet?

Ed

grind the guide pin bolt head off....

I haven't had a chance to get to it yet. I'll be tackling it either today or tomorrow. If heating it and soaking it doesn't work again then I'll have to try and grind the head off and drill it out. I'll post an update.

Here's an option if you want to do this. I have a set of anchor brackets laying around for the 9 bolt I'm building. I can send you one and you can get new guide pins at Napa's online store:

http://www.napaonline.com/cgi-bin/nc...grpid=29849186

$18.99 for 2

My pins are a bit messed up, though. Just buy me another anchor bracket or replace it, and send it back.

Lemme know...Ed

Well I got a set of guide pins from a friend for free and worked on it yesterday. Using the heat wrench, the liquid wrench and a socket wrench I managed to break the pin free and pull it out. Nothing was really damaged either so I cleaned the bore as best I could and reused the bracket.

I now have a pretty bad grinding noise coming from that wheel; a sound similar to that when your brakes are in massive need of replacing. The pads are only a week old, and the calipers are only a week old. The only thing I think is happening is there's a new wear pattern forming now that there's full contact with the pads and rotors. I noticed a small 1/8" wide strip around the outer edge of the rotor that was slightly built up because it the pads never contacted it. Its possible that that built up edge of rust is now being ground down - either that or the caliper is chattering and not squeezing the pads perpendicularly to the rotor surface. I'm gonna have the wheels off today to swap on my snow tires so I'll see whats happening.

"perpendicularly" ? Cool word

I would recomend drive around with your ebrake on a little but I don't think you can do that can you? Ya don't want to smoke them but some increased wear wouldn't hurt.

Has your pedal feel improved?

Have you thought about buying that brake bleeder gizmo that sucks the fluid out? Perhaps there is some air up in the front section of the lines?

Check your vacuum hose to the booster. Maybe it has a slight leak?

Let me know how you make out.

Well, I found the cause of the grinding and it had to be the stupidest thing I've done to date. One of the pads was flipped with the backing side grinding into the rotor. It managed to score the rotor pretty bad and when I went to my local shop to have it turned they said it was already at the minimum thickness. New rotors for these brakes range from cheapo $30 to very good $88 They didn't have anything in stock and I simply had to put it back on the car. I had saved a set of old pads that were still decent and put one of them against the scored surface. When I get some money together again I'll replace both rotors together.

The brakes STILL act the same way I've done practically everything to fix this except change the MC, booster and hardlines. I have new hardlines from the distribution valve by the diff to the calipers, Earl's steel lines, new calipers and new pads.

I don't think this is related to the MC or booster since the pedal sinks easily ONLY after I make a right hand turn. Its fine when I make a left turn or straight. I might look into getting a vacuum pump to aid in bleeding the lines as well.

You and I need to have words. Have you thought about selling the bird and buying a honda after that blunder?! That's ok, I have an extra rotor because I didn't measure the runout of the axle when I was doing the swap.

What about taking it to midas for a checkup? Perhaps they can diagnose the problem.

Nah, I was thinking of a Talon but thats too low for me.

I've been thinking about going to a shop to let them deal with it, yes. Don't worry about the rotor, I'm just gonna replace both at some time in the near future.

Where is that finger smilie when you want it!

I don't recall you complaining as you took off like a bat out of hell down Rt.10

BTW: My boss recomends power bleeding the entire system.

Well if you really want a finger smile to use, haha here is one you can pass on:I'll probably get $hit for this ,but you asked where it was. Just trying to help out. LOL
By the way, I have adds. to 3 pages of these kind of smiles.