Lancia Beta Forum

When I took my rear calipers apart the ally body (piston housing) was separated from the cast caliper section.  In the ally body itself, to keep these two together there is (was) a small spring that pushed a locating/fixing pin or dowel into a hole on the caliper.

The pin & spring have seized/rusted in place, but at removal time there also seemed to be some kind of bonding agent that helped "glue" the ally/steel bits together.  As the steel section slides on very easily it also slides off very easily, this is not what I would call optimal !  I had to use a hydraulic press to get them apart, but now I can fit them together by hand, the remnants of the pin kind of hold things in place but give it a wiggle and they easily part. Two questions arise now that my calipers have been stripped, cleaned and electroplated.

Pin / Spring is shot, so what do people do to fix in place?  Drill out the remnants and fix a dowel in its place?

Does anyone know what that bonding agent is?  Is it a kind of industrial version of thread-lock?

Any input would be gratefully received.

I worked out a solution for this:

1.   Centre punch the remnants of the spring & pin assemble.  This will cause it to drop down into its hole in the ally piston body.

2.   Get a 4mm allen head grub screw and matching thread tap.

3.   Tap a thread into the steel caliper hole to accept the grub screw.

4.   Bit of copper-slip on the thread and screw in the grub screw once the threaded hole and the locating hole are lined up.

My calipers are now rock solid and ready for refitting to the car.

This to me seems a far simpler method than that used by Lancia originally, usual over complication of design I guess ;-)

The only other modification I did to the rear brakes was to drill out the rusted & snapped off bleed nipple, TIG weld up the hole and fit the BetaBoyz Banjo bolt with integrated bleed nipple.  This eliminates any future potential for the old bleed nipple rusting to the point where it starts to weep brake fluid.

sounds like a good job done, to be fair to Lancia I think the original set up is probably designed more for manufacturing convenience than serviceability no doubt much quicker to assemble in the factory