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Old 07-09-2022, 02:27 AM   #1
silence2-38554
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Default Centric reman 2-pots with media blasted bores....junk?

Hey everyone,

I've been trying to get everything together for a 4/2 pot caliper upgrade over the past few weeks. Rather than over-paying for a set of shot used calipers off ebay, I decided to try out going with a set of rebuilt calipers from Rockauto. The fronts are from Cardone, the rears are from Centric.

The Cardone calipers seem well re-built, with no issues to speak of as far as I can tell. They will be going on the car tomorrow.

The Centric rears, however, man oh man. Tons of issues. I thought it would be the other way around when I ordered! First thing I noticed was that the shape of the visible part of the pistons were different from one caliper to the other. Wanting to make sure they were at least the same diameter, I pulled one from each caliper. Sure enough, two very different pistons! I confirmed with Centric that one of them was not even a Centric piston & they just blamed Rockauto.

Anyway, once I got the pistons out, I more closely inspected the calipers & realized the inner surface of the piston bore, normally a machined finish, had been media blasted to the same porous surface as the rest of the caliper. They are aluminum pistons, so I'm sure they just do this by default to get rid of corrosion.

So then, I'm not really sure what to do with these. Will the media blasted surface ruin the ability for the inner piston seal to actually seal? Are leaks inevitable at this point & the calipers ruined? I've always considered Centric a quality brand & would be surprised if this is common practice that resulted in chronic leaks & they just kept doing it. If they will likely seal up fine, I'll roll with them. If not, I suppose I could just return them to Rockauto, pick up a used set somewhere & rebuild them from scratch.

What would y'all do in this situation?
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Old 07-19-2022, 12:54 PM   #2
silence2-38554
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Just to add some visual references, here's how the two calipers appeared before disassembling:
IMG_3054 by Kris Yates, on Flickr
IMG_3055 by Kris Yates, on Flickr

Pretty different, eh? The way the dust boot sat so differently on each caliper prompted disassembly, which led me to the very different pistons. Also worth noting all of the aluminum dust sitting on the dust boot. This piston was nearly impossible to get out, as it was assembled completely dry!

Pistons:
IMG_3075 2 by Kris Yates, on Flickr

From what I can tell, the piston on the left is likely an original Subaru piston that was in good enough shape to re-use. The one on the right is a Centric replacement piston.

Then, the really alarming bit that I discovered, the media blasted piston bores. This is supposed to be a smooth, machined surface:

IMG_3091 2 by Kris Yates, on Flickr

The area I'm concerned about is this groove where the seal is supposed to seat:
IMG_3092 2 by Kris Yates, on Flickr

The situation is very frustrating, because RockAuto won't take them back since I painted them. Centric seems to think there is no problem, but I also get the impression that their custom service technicians have no idea what they're talking about. It's very unfortunate, as I've always held Centric / StopTech in high regard, but may look elsewhere after all this.

So then, it would seem I have two options-

Properly re-assemble both calipers, install them as-is & cross my fingers no fluid leaks behind the back the piston seals across the media blasted surface.

Or, return these as the "cores", take a loss of around $100 and start over, most likely with Cardone calipers. Fwiw, their service techs seemed much more knowledgable, claiming that their aluminum calipers are often steel sleeved if necessary in order to retain the machined surface if the caliper is corroded when they receive it.

If Centric remans thousands of aluminum calipers like this & doesn't see constant problems, then they're probably fine, but it's also a safety component that I'm not terribly confident in. Thoughts?
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Old 07-19-2022, 03:40 PM   #3
Patrick Olsen
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Quote:
Originally Posted by silence2-38554 View Post
If Centric remans thousands of aluminum calipers like this & doesn't see constant problems, then they're probably fine, but it's also a safety component that I'm not terribly confident in. Thoughts?
I'm not any help as far as providing a response based on any actual technical reasoning, just responding to say that I would have the same competing thoughts in my head.

I guess I would fall on the side of trying another set, as it definitely seems wrong to me that a seal is going to be riding on a surface that is no longer machined as it should be. Maybe order the Cardone set and do the same inspection before painting them so you can see how they compare? If the Cardones have the same issue (or something similar) you can just return them and stick with the Centrics that you've already painted and only be out the shipping costs. If the Cardones are good then you go with your plan of returning the Centrics as the core and you're out the $100 or so.
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Old 07-20-2022, 12:58 PM   #4
silence2-38554
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Thanks for the reply, Patrick. One thing I realized I omitted is that the core return window is quite long, I believe 6 months. So, I may just reassemble these & throw them on for a few weeks to see what happens. If they're fine, they're fine. If they start to weep at all, I should have plenty of core return window left to get them sent back.
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Old 07-22-2022, 09:40 AM   #5
Patrick Olsen
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That makes sense. That's a nice, long core return window - don't often see that.
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Old 07-24-2022, 02:26 PM   #6
benflynn
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I bought 2 cardone remand off eBay for 63$ ea, they look great.
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Old 08-30-2022, 11:05 AM   #7
TitoBandito
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I've had remanufactured Raybestos front calipers on my RS for almost a year now. I see you have the 4/2 setup so we're talking different caliper models anyway (I had 2 pot fronts), but for what it's worth, the Centric/Cardone/Raybestos/AC Delco stuff all look similar in their remanufactured lines. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if they all outsource the work to the same subcontractor facility.
Sorry I am not able to answer your original question, as I never removed the pistons and looked at the piston bore before I installed the calipers. Haven't had any problems with leakage on these units. And judging by the housing being media blasted as well, seems reasonable that Raybestos would also have media blasted all the exposed parts including the piston bore when they cleaned them up. So only conjecture but I do assume these calipers bores would look like that. Anything was an improvement over my corroded stock calipers where the pistons were not releasing all the way -- a lot of vibration feedback in the steering wheel from one front brake dragging, that was eliminated when I swapped out the olds for the remanufactured calipers.
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