Afternoon guys, I returned the caliper I bought yesterday to autozone, it was indeed bad, then went to advance and got one. Brought it home, went to put it on, whoever remans the brakes, put the passenger side caliper into a drivers side box. I had to go back, and they had to have one brough in. Anyways, got that one after about a two hour wait, put it on the truck, works fine! So happy to be done with this. The one i got from advance was in much better condition visually than the one autozone had, and the one from advance also came with a new hardware pack, which the autozone one did not have, and it was $5 bucks cheaper from advance too! Thanks so much for all your help, tips & info! I took off the passenger side caliper, cleaned & lubricated the mating surfaces and hit a lot of it with some steel wool.

I am about to take the truck for a test drive and see how it does. I am wondering if that stuck caliper was part of the reason why it took the alignment shop so long to do the truck before. I am hoping that it didn't play a factor in the alignment at the time, but I also feel like they would have noticed if the caliper was sticking then so we shall see.

 

Bonus news:

Took the truck for a test drive and all is well for the alignment, it didn't pull to the left or right, the only time it pulled a bit was dude to the degree of road crown one way or another. Got on the highway and it stayed straight and true! Now that everything is all set with this front end, it almost has me reconsidering swapping in a solid axle.

 

glad you finally got it figured out. i really hate mass rebuilt parts, there is no quality control anymore.

 

It's definitely not the first thing I've purchased that has had to be returned instantly. Another good one is those solenoids that are hooked to the battery and starter, never know what you're going to get with those, two starts or two years!

 

Yeah fewer and fewer parts these days are worth getting from the chain stores. Often a little extra effort and expense ahead of time saves more later.

For example with the topic at hand I rarely buy calipers. With the bigger versions the surface of the caliper where it meets the bracket is very important. This surface is never any good on reman calipers cause they shot peen or tumble them. Then there's the bleeder issues, often messed up threads, different sizes etc. Thus I prefer to rebuild old ones myself. It's just a couple pistons and seals.

I'm sorry this may be to late for the OP but consider keeping your cores or grab a couple decent ones from a wrecking yard or something. Then next time just rebuild them before taking the truck apart and swap when needed.

I do this kind of thing with a lot of parts. But I'm also the kind of guy that keeps both a spare truck and a parts truck around, so to each their own.

 

Now all you have to do is re-grow all the hair you pulled out.

 

Rebuilding OEM calipers is way better, I agree Brute! And it's pretty dang easy!