'69 Camaro brake caliper problems and questions

[cib12]

go knock around a junk yard and find some old washers-

[m22mike]

If you guys are going to use old washers, you can aneal them by heating cherry red and letting them cool at room temp.
Old time aircraft mech trick for re using solid spark plug washers.
Never tried it myself, maybe worth a try.

Mike

[NCGuy68]

[ QUOTE ]
If you guys are going to use old washers, you can aneal them by heating cherry red and letting them cool at room temp.

[/ QUOTE ]

Mike beat me to it, I was going to suggest the very same thing. This method will make them more ductile (softer) and slightly expand them. In metallurgy its called recrystallization. For sure worth a shot.

[copo69]

Thanks for the suggestions but it's already fixed. I sent it to a brake shop where a longer bolt was used to pull the hose down tighter and seal the hose to caliper. He then replaced the bolt with my correct banjo bolt and kept the washer indexed on the caliper. He had a caliper dyno which would keep the caliper pressurized while repairing. Guy does a lot of Porsche and BMW hipo stuff. Sent 'em back with hoses installed. I had used regular caliper bolts that didn't go as far into caliper and the result when I laid the torque to them was pulled threads. The problem was a small nick in the sealing surface that was caused by the tumbling process probably when Stainless Steel Brakes rebuilt them years ago. There is no way to efficiently resurface the seat. Anyway they seal now and the guy was good to deal with. I had started to use the annealing process you described but didn't try it. I think the problem is current copper washers are much harder than older ones and also not quite as thick.