My rear brakes are a tad sticky to the extent I notice I have to slightly drive off the brakes some mornings. Anyway, I wanted to split the calipers to allow me to generally clean the guide pins, caliper and apply some copper ease.

 

I took out the 2 bolts in line with each guide pin and was then going to pull out each pin and split the caliper. The problem is I can't get the top pin past where the brake hose goes into the caliper. I also can't seem to pivot the caliper having removed one bolt as it seems there is no slack in either the brake line or the hand brake cable. 

 

Have people split their rear calipers without having to remove either the brake hose or the handbrake cable?

Take both the 13mm bolts out and slide the caliper off, pretty simple.

You may have to lever the caliper off the pads. The sliders pull out when the caliper is out of the way.

Edited 10 January, 201610 yr by Tech1e

You've done this a MK1 Octavia VRS?

 

So sliding the caliper off doesn't yank excessively on brake hose or hand brake cable. It felt like the combination of those two was holding it from moving backwards enough. As it is the first time I've done it on this car I was being a bit cautious....

Think I was being a scaredy cat and that any resistance is likely due to corrosion. I watched this:

 

You've done this a MK1 Octavia VRS?

 

So sliding the caliper off doesn't yank excessively on brake hose or hand brake cable. It felt like the combination of those two was holding it from moving backwards enough. As it is the first time I've done it on this car I was being a bit cautious....

Being a Skoda tech for 15+ years, yeah one or two.

You won't do any damage.