Dec 29, 2024
1
0
Hi everyone,
I have lost count of how many attempts I have made to tackle this issue in the last few weeks.

I first noticed a warm driver-side rear wheel, so I jacked up the car and driver side wheel wasn't spinning, pads and discs needed changing anyway- took out guide pins, cleaned off the dirt and regreased them (both rear sides). I then rewound the pistons (seemed easy after some initial force).
Closed brake fluid reservoir, turned car on, pumped breaks, test drive and still seemed seized. A few more attemps later of rewinding caliper, it seemed to be fine!

Few days later, noticed handbrake cable on passenger side was overstretched. Saw online that the handbrake arm mechanism can get seized- so I attempted to clean both sides which did the trick. I soon noticed without any pads or contact on caliper piston that when using the handbrake, the piston would only push out, and not retract. My first question is this normal?? And if i now use the handbrake will it only keep contact againt the pads and disc??
After both sides were done, it seems that both sides are now seized. Do I need new calipers? What did I do wrong, are they fixable??
All after that, driver side coil spring has now snapped and making a pronging sound. A job for another day:sleep:...
Many thanks in advance
 

RUM4MO

Active Member
Jun 4, 2008
8,005
1,085
South Scotland
It does seem to be the RHS rear calliper that starts to seize first - though I don't know exactly why that is so!

So, from my experience, you now have the choice of replacing the seized calliper(or both to avoid the LHS calliper seizing sooner than later), or removing the rear pistons, cleaning the "stuff" of the piston surface, probably fitting new piston seal and dust cover, and that should solve your problems.

I'm at the first stage of this repair, ie my wife's 2015 Polo ended up with a seized rear RHS calliper, I replaced that one with a Pagid remanufactured calliper bought in (from ECP) from Halfords, which ended up being cheaper than from ECP and no need to return the old calliper.

After doing that, I "serviced" the removed seized calliper and sort of used doing that as a "test" for cleaning up the rear LHS calliper before it ends up seizing - which, it seems will happen due to these rear callipers being made of aluminium alloy, and moisture getting in past the dust cover will always cause lots of curd/scale "growing" on the piston surface and seizing it!

The "over stretched" cable is probably just a piston sticking or not (yet) having ended winding out to its correct position after you retracted the pistons.

Edit:- a spring breaking - typical at this time of year! Was it a front one or a rear one?

I've ended up with a broken front spring on New Year's morning, broken rear spring at MOT time, and a broken front spring while driving to park at the airport!

So, as my wife's 2015 VW Polo 1.2TSI 110S 6MT was bought new and had run 50,000 miles without any issues, this summer, I refreshed all the front and rear suspension to try to avoid suffering any broken springs etc!

Another Edit:- if it is the front RHS spring that has snapped, then you will need to remove the end of the drive shaft from that hub before you attempt to ease the strut out of its socket on the hub carrier - that is due to the drive shaft ending up fouling the lower arm/TCA as you attempt to lower the hub assembly down low enough to get the strut out of the hub carrier socket - a bit annoying, more time and more tools needed!
 
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