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The owner of my shop asked me to do a brake job on his 2008 Ford escape. Just the front wheels, which are disc. The caliper on the driver’s side had stuck open and that was the cause of the rotors rear side being torn up.

In this video I show you how to unstick the caliper:

You simply go inside the vehicle and press the brake, after the caliper has been removed from the rotor, and it will extend the caliper piston further, thus unbinding the bind.

This is the temporary fix though. More than likely the caliper will begin to do the same thing; bind up. I’ll be monitoring the progress over the next few weeks to see if the back of the rotor changes width. We don’t want to let this new rotor get too far gone or he’ll have to replace another rotor. A caliper is $61 for this 2008 Ford Escape.

Likes: 355

Views: 49047

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  1. PATOUH2

    Simple …Take the caliper off and rebuilt it

  2. K

    Would you do both calipers if one was locked up??

  3. Mechanics Choice

    best thing in emergency like this, is to pump the piston all the way out of the caliper, and sand off the rust on the piston, and put it back in.

    but even if you get it going with your method or mine, the caliper is due for replasing/overhauling anyways!

  4. BitHappy

    That pumping the breaks a couple times trick saves my ass! Thanks a lot man!!

  5. Henry Duke

    I'm going to monitor it 3 4 10 30 40 days that was funny

  6. Alvaro Linares

    Great video! Thanks for the help !

  7. Dale Mihocik

    While hard to diagnose from a distance I think that if you only had opened the bleeder of that caliper the piston would have retracted easily. It could also be a collapsed brake hose.

  8. Falcor The Wonder Dog

    Replace the calipers pads and rotors.
    No reason to take a chance on brakes.

  9. YoBoyFredo

    What if the piston wont push out

  10. Markus Edling

    Thank you so much! Worked perfectly 👍

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