Rear Caliper Picture PLEASE!

[1983Pinin]

Hi,
I made the mistake of completely dissasembling both reatmr calipers on my 83 Spider since I was planning on painting all calipers before reassembly. As has been stated here numerous times , the rear caliper reassembly is not intuitive if you didn't pay attention to pawl/piston screw/spring washer positioning while dissasembling.
Would anyone be so kind (if you have a rear caliper off the car) to pull back the rubber boot in the back and photograph the orientation of the pawl . I have seen pictures on-line of dissasembled units, but not assembled, and the shop manual drawing is sadly incorrect (again, noted here in past posts). I saw someone post here that half of the rebuilt rear calipers are not correctly assembled, so this seems to be a common problem--not knowing the proper orientation of parts.
I think a picture of a known working rear caliper, especially under the rubber boot, would be so helpful to our community.
Thanks!!!
--Peter

[DRUMMOND]

Hope these can help

[1983Pinin]

DRUMMOND--YOU ROCK !!!

I predict your post with the rear caliper pics will go viral! I have never seen such a complete illustration--anywhere.

If I can ask just one question. The pawl ( the little wedgie piece ) has a narrow side and a wider side. Which side is nestled in the screw part with the washers? Wide or narrow?

You saved me a lot of worries about doing a bad reassembly --I owe you!

--Peter

[DRUMMOND]

Hi Peter

I did this along time ago, but I believe the wedge will only go in one way. As far as I can remember the thick side of the wedge sits on the screw washer part.

good luck on assembly and don't forget to make sure the piston is in the right position for you to bleed the brakes correctly.

[1983Pinin]

Thanks for the response.
So here's the next step of the story. Using the great pics I did the reassembly only to find the pistons were not going in.
The issue is I damaged the female threads on the back of the piston when I removed them by banging them out from the back, instead of screwing rhem out from the front.
at that point I said THWI, and just bought 2 new rear calipers from Ricambi since they have such a good price. Interestingly I see no grease under the black rubber boot ik the back. Is it really needed?
so next step is reinstallation, though I am sure there is a trick for getting parking brake cable back on. I bought a new parking brake just 'coz, the old one is fine.

--Peter

[DRUMMOND]

Grease in the boot is xtra insurance and helps waterproof the sliding parts.
Make sure the wishbone for the handbrake cable is at its end thread ,attach the cables to the calipers then tighten up the wishbone finger tight. two or three clicks of the handbrake lever then adjust the wishbone nut till the calipers bite (rear wheels don't move) Don't expect too much holding

[JohnMc]

A while back got a parking brake cable where the ends that went into the brakes was too large diameter. I fought it with for over an hour and then measured and too large.
Got another one from another vendor and worked great. So just mfg error.
Just FYI in case it does not go really smoothly - since the job is very fast and easy - normally.

[DieselSpider]

I am rebuilding a spare right now and only found 4 Belleville Washers instead of 5 so the previous re-builder had outer 2 facing in the same direction. I am having trouble locating the Black Oxide 7/16" or 11mm Belleville Washers with a 1.1085" OD, 0.0315" thick and a 0.685" height.

The closest match Fastenall lists that meets all the other dimension has a 10mm ID which I can bore out to 7/16" however the materials are: 17-7PH Stainless Steel at 979 Newtons/220 lbs
301 Stainless Steel at 702 Newtons/158 lbs
Spring Steel Zinc Phos at 723 Newtons/163 lbs.

I am leaning towards replacing all of them with 301 Stainless making up two calipers that match to get the most even parking brake force on both sides. I wonder how many rebuilders loose or eliminate a Belleville to make assembly easier and put out calipers that don't provide equal clamping of the parking brake. My thinking now is that to truly rebuild the rear calipers you really should be replacing the old worn out Belleville washers which have likely corroded, compressed, lost tensile strength, etc as far as Best Practice is concerned.

I do not see them sold by our two main vendors.