We were a noob and an intermediate at a track day at Watkins Glen on Monday and Eddie’s right front calipers failed. He ordered a replacement and it was shipped overnight from California and arrived next day before noon.

So at lunch, we ran down to town with my floor jack and tools and got the caliper halfway installed before I realized they had sent a left front caliper. We needed a right and I anticipated difficulty bleeding the system since the bleeder was on the bottom half of the caliper. The air would stay to the top.

So we pulled the caliper off of the car, filled it with brake fluid and jiggled it back and forth a few times, adding fluid as we purged as much air as we could, virtually all as far as I could tell. Then Eddie filled the reservoir with brake fluid and we bled the right front line in the usual fashion, but with me holding my fingers over the banjo bolt to prevent air from coming back into the system.

When I was satisfied that we had purged most, if not all, of the air out of the line, we quickly bolted the line to the caliper. But with the left caliper, the line was now reversed, coming from the underside of the caliper rather than from the top. So we disconnected the line from where it is anchored on the back side of the brakes to give it some additional flexibility and then zip-tied it loosely into place.

We installed the caliper and pads - just the two bolts - and bled the system. Copious air came out with the first two pumps, but then we were good. Tested the brakes and they seemed to be working just fine.

He'll have to correct this install, but Eddie made it back home in one piece and without difficulty.

 

fyi if you need to bleed you can put a block of wood or something hard in it and just bleed it right way up before you install it. another option is to just do the gravity bleed with the caliper upwards