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As I said in my other thread regarding brake pad selection for the street - I ran into an issue fitting my new pads and rotors. The drivers side rear caliper handbrake adjuster was seized solid stopping my installation attempt on the weekend.

Stripped the adjuster cog from both sides in there even after repeatedly spraying with brake cleaner, Wurth Rostoff and ended up soaking in WD40 overnite. Heaps of rusty crap came out. Freed the handbrake mechanism after some gentle persuasion with a BFH but the adjuster was still locked solid preventing me from winding the piston back in! After spending a good portion of my weekend on the frigging thing I gave up and removed the caliper from the car, expecting to have to buy a new/reco caliper this week, chucked my mountain bike in the back of the van and went for a ride. Naturally I got a puncture about 3km in and had to walk out! haha DOH. Great weekend!

Told the old man yesterday and he brought over a can of 'Reducteur H-72' Super Releasing Agent today. Sprayed it down the offending hole and about an hour later I put the least stuffed adjuster in it and gave it a crank - it worked! This spray is awesome! Its $29.99 from Bunnings apparently. Would have saved me a whole lot of grief on the weekend.

I feel your pain in regards to trying to free up the handbrake mechanism. I gave up and ended up getting 2 new rear callipers for $200 landed from UK.

Maybe I might give my old ones a dose of the magic spray to see if I can resurrect them or try another old timer solution to free up seized callipers....remove them and soak overnight in molasses. Apparently molasses is great for rust removal.

Earlybird wrote:Apparently molasses is great for rust removal.

But being such a thick viscous fluid, that tends to dry up to be rather solid, it won't do much good for the fluid passages, or the piston bore.

DOH..silly me.

I should have stated the obvious, that the molasses is diluted and needs to be washed off after it does its magic.

A bit of research on the www explains the rest.