I recently found out that my left rear brake caliper was frozen. I had noticed the wheel getting pretty warm to the touch, so I pulled the wheel and took a look-see. The pads were barely worn (~2 years old), but as I spun the wheel, I noticed the outside pad was dragging on the rotor. Not enough to overheat it, but certainly enough to cause some unwanted friction. As I tried to shimmy the pads back in, I noticed the outside piston wasn't retracting. I normally use a big screwdriver to lever the piston back in, or pinch it back in with a big adjustable wrench, but it wasn't budging this time. I didn't want to have nightmares about wrangling with caliper pistons, so I bought a reman genuine Volvo caliper from O'Reilly.

I want to tackle this one in the morning, but I can find no guidance on how to get the rigid brake line off the back of the caliper. In all my searching, I did see one reference to having to "spin the caliper off the brake line" in order to avoid twisting it, but is this necessary? I need a guide with pictures, but I can't find any on the 'net and the Bentley manual simply says "Carefully disconnect the brake line...". Ok Einstein, I can do that but I don't want to pretzel the damn thing trying to 'carefully disconnect'. I think my head's too big to get in the wheel well far enough to get eyeballs on exactly how the brake line fits on so I can get a better idea of how it can be taken off, I couldn't see it with a mirror, and my phone won't do closeups.

Anybody got any pictures, or does anybody know of a good guide somewhere out there that I couldn't find?

 

Loosen the line where it attaches to the caliper, then lift off the caliper and turn it, unscrewing it from the line so the line won't "pretzel". You may have to lift the car and get under it to get a better look, it's hard to do it by feel...

 

Aha, so I DO have to "spin the caliper off the brake line" then. OK, I guess we'll soon see how well I can juggle a wrench in one hand and a spinning caliper in the other... *cue "Entrance of the Gladiators"*

 

I haven't had to spin the caliper in order to get the brake line off for front or rear and I live in the rust belt. With the Cupra-nickel fittings that Volvo used this really shouldn't be necessary. Now if the line had been replaced in the past using steel fittings (the cupra-nickel ones aren't available any more when I did a search) then this may occur since the steel one will rust causing the problem that Lev noted.

 

OK, thanks for the heads up. I got the line off uneventfully, as it appears to be the older style connection . Changed the caliper uneventfully also, and it looks pretty snazzy. Now to bleed the things. I neglected to purchase a vacuum thingie, so I employed my wife to help me with it old-school style: "Pump!... OK, hold it!... OK, pump again!... Hold it again!..." (ad nauseum).

After a few times doing that with nothing coming out of the valve, it finally would spurt out a teaspoon or so worth of fluid every time she held the brake pedal down, but no more, and no bubbles that I could see. Is this normal? She said the pedal would go down ever so slightly every time, but I remember when I was the younger helping my Dad bleed the brakes, it seemed that the pedal would go to the floor every time he told me to hold the pedal down.

I can see also that the fluid should probably be changed at some point, ick. .

 

Fluid should be coming out at a good flow every time the pedal is depressed. Don't push it all the way down, may be 80% of the way down. And there should be some bubbles coming out at least in the beginning... Now may be a good time to change the fluid--you are 25% there...

 

the old fashion bleeding method won't work well on ABS cars, for those you really need a vacuum bleeder. I forget what year 240' introduced ABS, my 1989 780 had it.

there's a bunch of stuff on volvo brakes here,
https://www.volvoclub.org.uk/faq/Brakes.html

 

Earlier today, I ordered one of those hand-squeezy vacuum kits that had good reviews on Amazon. After looking around and reading your VolvoClub link, I see that the big positive-pressure bleeder kits like Motive would probably would do a better job, but they are more expensive. I'll see how the hand-squeezy thing works tomorrow and decide from there.

 

Well, that was painful...

The hand-squeezy thing seemed to work fine and hold pressure when I put my finger over the end of the hose, but neither the hose nor any of the fittings would grip the bleeder screw nipple enough for me to get any higher than 15 in/Hg, and then fairly rapidly (~2 seconds) fall to zero. All the auto advice folks I could find on the interwebs said you should do no less than 20 and close the valve when it gets to 5. OK. I got plenty of air sucking through the damned thing, but hardly any fluid. At least, not as much as I see in the videos for the hand-squeezy thingies, which seem to suck torrents out of the grimiest-looking calipers in the universe.

I had less than 5 hours before I would have to go to bed and go to work the next day. These brakes HAD to be done. I got desperate and took the hand pump off the assembly of tubes and cup and somehow managed to tape everything to my shop-vac. I held the tube on the bleeder nipple with a death grip, and still a bare minimum of fluid would come out. It was then that I noticed the bleeder valve was wiggling in its socket, even with only 1/8th of a turn, so I concluded that I had been sucking air from around the bleeder screw threads THE WHOLE TIME. I admitted defeat and just buttoned everything up to go and look up a positive-pressure bleed system like the ones they sell at IPD that just shove fluid right into the source. The one comfort I had was that the fluid coming out was clean, at least MUCH cleaner than what I originally drew off of it doing the two-person method, so at least something was moving. That prompted me to decide to take a drive around the block. If I got as far as clean fluid coming out, maybe the brakes would be OK.

They were. I'm stopping sooner and cleaner than before. Still a little bit of squishy-ness and I noticed some heating of the OTHER rear wheel, so I'm going to have to do this again with a new rear caliper on the OTHER side, but this time I'll go with the power bleed system that everybody had recommended in the first place and do a proper flush while I'm at it...

 

Was this a MityVac, or a off brand clone? Did you try putting a dab of grease on the nipple so the suitable hose adapter would seal better?

 

I have always bled ABS brakes the old way, with no machine, never had any problems. I doubt a 1990 240 has ABS anyway...

 

I wrapped the threads with PTFE tape to prevent them from sucking air over the threads.

My 1993 940 has ABS. Your 1990? Can't say, but it's possible. Easy enough to tell with a glance under the hood.

 

Never thought of using thread tape, thanks for the tip!
As far as I can tell, I don't have ABS brakes. All the ABS references I can find in my Bentley book start in '91, though it never simply says outright which years have it.

So now I've noticed heating on the right side rear wheel as well, so I get to do this all over again, yay!

 

a 240 with ABS only has one brake hose at he front caliber, a pre-ABS 240 has 2 hoses, because there's two separate brake circuits to each front wheel

 

For ABS just look at the big box with the brake lines under the hood that says ABS on it. All 940 have ABS, 240 started later as optional, went standard in 1993.

 

Got a Motive pressure bleeder. Replaced right-rear caliper. Yep, that one was seized too. Brake bleeding went like a charm, I'm really liking this system.

Until I got to the front-left caliper. One valve broken off, one valve the hex was rounded off, so I could only bleed the outside lower valve. I can maybe get a screw extractor to get the broken one out, and Vise-Grip the rounded-off one out, and put new valves in, or I can get a new caliper. Hell, at that point, why not the both fronts? The back ones are brand new, why stop there?

*crazed laughter from under the jack stands*