I am tring to swap out the rotors on my 6MT TL, and I ran into some problems. The bottom bolts that hold on the calipers, are stripped. The driver's side is so badly cross-threaded that I can't get it out. I was able to the passenger side bolts off, and one looks like this:






The whole where that bolt came from is completely stripped out, there are no more threads.

What are my options here? It seems my only option is to buy new calipers. It is Sunday and my car is on jackstands in my drive way.

This pisses me off because the dealer was the last one to work on my brakes last year. Fucking incompetent pieces of shit.

Well, I managed to get the passenger side rotor and pads changed. The bottom bolt on the driver's side caliper simply would not come off. I got it about 1/4" out, but it wouldn't move either way, even with an impact. I need to get it cut off. So the bottom bolt sits part way out and the top is tight. Hopefully it will hold until I can get it some where to torch it out.

check out the performance, parts and mods sections. there were a bunch of old threads where they were talking about problems with getting these bolts out and how they did it.

take it directly to the dealer and show the service manager
some monkey worked on your brakes and you paid them for it- they can fix it!!! for free!
Each repair job has a Tech Skill Level assigned to it- means they are trained to do it exactly right- not damage your car!!!
So what happened- the oil change guy got to learn on your brakes?

take pics for the Consumer Affairs -auto repair board in your state
Pics and letter for Acura Corp- they will want to know about this garbage!

When a similar thing happened to a friends TL -and the tech overtightened all the bolts AND left out a caliper to braket bolt!!!- missing gone not there!!
they gave him a free service and fixed their mistake no charge- sorry sir- would you like us to wash your car?

Where you run into a prob- at least I have on gen2- is finding a replacement mounting bracket for the caliper. The threads are ripped right out of it! cant buy just the bracket- comes with caliper- so its junkyard searching on thios project

Did the OPs car happen to have a severe brake shake for a while?
That will rip the threads out of the bracket too
how many miles on those brakes?

~30K on the rotors and pads. I had them replaced over a year ago at the Honda dealer I bought the car from. The did it for free because the rotors were warped. Do you think I still have a chance to get them to fix it?


The real kicker here is that the pads and rotors still have plenty of life in them. I wanted to put my D/S rotors on.

Wish I had read this before running into this very same problem. No kidding, one week ago a family friend and I tried to save some dough by doing my brakes on my '04 6MT. I went with Hawk Ceramics (front and rear) through TireRack (great place).

Having almost no experience with Brembos, I came here to research. Unfortunately, I printed instructions which encouraged removal of calipers to change the front pads. As another member (I found it later) points out, only the pins need to be removed when changing the front pads. (If I had only seen that post before our disaster. )

My bolts looked very much like sho_nuff1997's after muscling them off with a 4-foot "persuasion" bar. I was able to clean out the material from the threads on the end of the bolt on the passenger side before remounting them, but did not do this on the driver's side. When everything was reassembled, the driver's side caliper wobbled and rattled quite a bit.

I had also purchased Yokohama AVID W4S (245/45ZR-17) from TireRack which were shipped to my dealer. When I made my appointment, I asked for a brake inspection. I have always been impressed with this dealer's work (efficient and seem honest), though the prices are high. I hadn't mentioned much about my brake pad replacement yet the mechanic found the stripped bolt on the driver's side. They recommended caliper replacement (as the only safe option).

The caliper replacement was $600. When I got the estimate from the dealer, I quickly tried to find a replacement online, but couldn't.

My calipers had never been removed previously, so I don't believe the stripping was anyone's fault. I believe these Brembos just heat up so much that the metal fuses to the bolt - however, I'm no engineer and certainly no mechanic.

I feel your pain.

BTW, with < 100 miles on the new setup, I'm pretty happy with the tires and pads.

Some high-temp anti seize would go a long way with this issue...I use the stuff all the time during re-assembly of parts exposed to heat, chemicals etc. As for the stripped bore on the caliper bracket, replacement would seem to be the prudent option....don't dick around with brakes; just not worth risking it with Heli-coil, Thread-sert

I have taken these calipers off on more TLs than I can count I have never seen this. I highly doubt that this is caused by anything other than a poor previous repair.