Broke bleeder off in an alum caliper.

[disco stu]

I was about to bleed my Aerospace brakes after swapping to a manual cylinder. So there I am trying not to round off the nut with a flare wrench, but it was in good. So I try a socket and twisted that SOB off in there.

Funny thing is, I was not even loosening the bleeder. It's a little 1/4 inch fitting and I thought it was just the nipple. I just went to town on the 1/8 NPT screw body instead.

Anyways, caliper should be pretty easy to disassemble, but getting a real tight brass fitting out of aluminum without screwing up the threads is gonna suck.




One of those days I guess.

 

[INEEDAGN]

Sounds like the day I put a hole in my brand new PTS radiator while sliding it in the car. I got it fixed, but it still sucked. Plus it added downtime.

 

[ijames]

John, don't forget heat is your friend. Use a heatgun and take it up to about 400F - I'm sure it gets that hot with very hard braking because the boiling point of brake fluid is in that range. With aluminum that will expand a 1/4" hole almost a thousandth (0.001") which should help a lot (yeah, the brass expands too, but not quite as much). If you have an IR thermometer get it out and play, otherwise dip your finger in water and keep heating until when you flick a drop on the aluminum the droplet sizzles. If it doesn't come out when it is all hot the first time let it cool all the way back to room temp and heat it again, cool, and heat again and then try the fitting again. Cycling will expand and contract the fitting in the hole and compress whatever corrosion is in there.