How to Clean Brake Perches

Part of the Video Series How to Install Car Brakes

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Working on your car brakes? Learn how to clean brake perches with expert auto maintenance tips in this free car repair video clip.

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Video Transcript

How to Clean Brake Perches
Hi! My name is Nate McCullough on behalf of expertvillage.com. In this clip we are going to talk about the proper way to prepare your caliper bridge for new parts. This piece here is your caliper bridge and it has steel shims that sit on it here and one exactly backwards that sits up here. Those provide a hardened steel surface for the brake pads to ride on. If the pads were to disriide on this cast iron, it would wear a groove in it and overtime that pad may cock or get stuck. Being that it's cast iron and cast iron corrodes pretty good. You are going to want to clean these perches off with either a flat bastard file. I like to use a screwdriver. Just take and push down on it to get off any of the surface rust and you can stuff is coming off in chunks there. You can even go as far as using a wire brush. That too me the time involved in brushing them to a shiny polish finish, is it worth the benefit you get out of it. Being that it is cast iron, these will be kind of rusty in a few weeks. You just want to get the large chunks off, got to clean this side and the inside. The caliper pad just sits on there like this, just like so. You got to get both sides, top and bottom, inside and out. Clean our inside here. Some technicians like to install some caliper grease on these perches. Again that's not necessary being that its an exposed portion of the braking system and that grease will be washed off relatively quickly being that the perches don't have any protective booting on them. They are exposed to the weather. All right. Once you've got the top and bottom on the inside and outside cleaned, you are ready to install your new parts.

About the Expert

Expert: Nathan McCullough graduated from Nashville Auto-Diesel College with a Grade Point Average of 3.5 and received their craftsmanship award and honor seal. Read More