Ebay bargain

I tracked down my problems with spongy brakes to a piston sticking in its seal. No amount of cleaning seemed to help, and I eventually spotted a very thin, very deep score down the side of the piston. I've got no idea how I didn't notice it before, but there you go.

So....£20 for new piston from Wemoto? Sod that, eBay time...

I got a pair of calipers for £20.79 delivered. Bargain. Except they were a complete mess. Came off a bike with 7k miles on it apparently, but coated in caked on brake fluid and brake dust and looked corroded to sin, which is why they were so cheap. No problem, I thought - a day spent cleaning them up and they'd be fine.

Wrong.

It took less than 2 hours, as all the crap fell away. Underneath were gorgeous, clean calipers - no seized pins, seals are fantastic, all the pistons were corrosion free. So £20 and 2 hours got me a pair of these:

they will look good on your mantle

[Spiderman]

that is a bargain indeed, good for you.

You got around to cleaning them at last , I got my pair of Front Brake pads by the way Neeja . We were talking about this at a stop on the way to see the Bread Boy one last time and I mentioned I bought a set of used pads off eBay . I won them for 99p and postage was £1.75 . My eBay points chimed in at the end of the auction and deducted themself and I got the pads for a grand total of £2.02 delivered .

Now the auction stated that they were a used set of pads that were taken off a K7 bike and they had done about 1000 miles . They arrived , turns out they are EBC ones and are seriously thick and don`t even have rust on them ...... bargain , saved me about £35 , just need to drill my pins out of my calipers and I can sling these in .

Good times Mr Badger. I'm going to have a set of pads off these to get rid of...they look OEM, but don't look like they've done anywhere near 7k miles

My front pads have done almost 30k now and are OEM , just goes to showe how much I use my brakes , I replaced the rear ones as they had actually crumbled . this guy must have used his front brakes a Lot as these were a Non-OEM set . Probably somebody that lives in a busy area unlike myself who uses his brakes about 3 times in 14 miles on my commute to work , and that`s only if I have to

I finally have brakes that work! After 2 months of faffing about and replacing nigh on every part of the brake system, pulling the front lever no longer results in half an inch of sponge before the brakes kick in fully.

On the downside, I discovered that the calipers weren't as much of a bargain as I'd thought. Turns out that BOTH caliper slides are bent. I couldn't figure out why the system had no air coming out of it while bleeding but the lever would still come back to the bar...despite the fact that the brakes were coming on. Then I looked carefully and noticed that on both sides the calipers were squirming. Take both slides off, replace with old ones, hey-ho, fixed.

Job jobbed.