Sunday, finally decided to do something about my funky parking brake, esp since I signed up for the SCCA Test and Tune event this Saturday. I looked in the manual and took apart a spare caliper. To get to the parking brake mechanism, I needed some tools I didn’t have. So I decided to try and find a reman caliper. Looked online at Checkers, didn’t have it in stock. Called Napa, no deal. I swear finding parts for the FX is harder than finding parts for Scat’s ’51 Chevy. Finally tried Redline and they had it at the Kalihi store, so I booked it over and picked it up.The old one had some pretty new pads, but the caliper was a bit crusty. Being a floating design, it’s suppose to freely slide, but it didn’t. And of course there was something wrong with the parking brake mechanism. Having the entire reman caliper made things easy, just unbolt and swap over. Which went pretty well, or so I thought. Got everything together and went back over the bolts with the torque wrench. Hmm, the aftermarket stainless braid banjo fiting doesn’t seem to be torqueing. Wrong socket size maybe? Next size down don’t fit. Let’s try torque agai–got that sick squishing feeling as the bolt sheared. F! And now there’s brake fluid dripping rapidly on the ground. 
The heck am I going to do now? Luckily with the profusion of parts and that I had removed the matching caliper from the donor FX, I had a extra banjo bolt sitting out so grabbed it and installed it. Reusing the copper crush washers is not ideal, but it’ll do for now. This time everything torques up to spec and it’s all good.
Shiny caliper installed, bled, adjusted. Parking brake works good now. Although overall braking is not great. Takes a lot of effort to get to point of locking. The rotors are glazed. So I plan to order performance pads, rotors, and replace those stainless braid lines.
Oh yeah, here’s the throttle body from the other day, cleaned up.
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