We have had a 55 reg X trail from new, family car, within warranty one caliper packed up and was replaced then a couple of weeks out of warranty the other went. I suggested duff batch of calipers but they wouldn't hear of it and it was replaced with a new one from local factors as the Nissan one is £500.

Today while servicing car at 66k miles the piston seal "disintegrated while being pushed back" new caliper needed. They want me to cough for a caliper which they will generously "fit for free" ( their labour rate is £78 /hour) so within 6 years that's 3 brake calipers in a dealer serviced car.

Question am I unlucky or are their parts not as good as they should be or am I just tight fisted and everyone else is happily paying? Ihave absolutely no problem in paying for parts to keep car in tip top condition but I have a strange feeling about the caliper bit.

Have had lots of other cars Saabs, Subarus, Fords and never had this problem before, the service manager says he has come across a few of these cars with probs, Nissan customer service say they know nothing - clearly untrue since I bent their ears the first time round.

Has anyone else any experience of this?

cheers
Mike

Got a few customers with X-trails. Not had a particular problem with the calipers on any of them.

Why would a new caliper be needed if just the piston seal has gone?

http://www.biggred.co.uk/ has seal kits for £28

the question I'd ask is: was it the nissan one that failed again or the motorfactor one ?

(probably followed by: which muppet wrecked the seal ? )

also you can't go far wrong with biggred - I've had a few recon calipers from them now and they are all spot on

[Edited on 3/6/2011 by mcerd1]

Did the vehicle have new pads fitted some time before first calliper failure because it sounds like contamination by mineral oil.

Even a tiny amount of contamination by mineral oil will destroy the seals, many garages don't realise that WD40 or similar products contain kerosene like hydrocarbons and generously spray it on the callipers when fitting new pads.

Surely any brake/suspension parts should be fitted in pairs, i would not want to fit just one new caliper to a car

^^ you should be able to do just 1 caliper (assuming thats all that wrong and you keep the old disc/pads)

but pads & discs must be done in pairs

[Edited on 3/6/2011 by mcerd1]

Absolutely no need to change discs in pairs, lightly scrub the the older disc with 80 to 120 grade production paper and just bed-in and heat cycle the pads & disc before handing over to customer. Contrary to what the purveyors of fancy brake discs put about it takes a very large difference in brake disc surface finish to produce a brake imbalance.

i have seen a few calipers go on front of xtrails
never on the rear
was it on the n/s as they seem to get hot and pads sticking

I've had to have 2 calipers replaced ever, the first one I broke the second siezed after a year's not-use

I've seen two X-trails that needed the front calipers sorted in the past year. Both needed stripped, cleaned & rebuilt due to sticking pistons. I think one was an 06 & the other a 56 reg.
And this is the only two I see often, it would appear they are a bit prone to it!

I agree with the comment about using WD40 etc on them, dosent take long to damage the seals. We see it a fair bit on plant & agric stuff where most things use mineral oil in the brakes but a few use conventional brake fluid, often they get one when they should have the other!

Thanks for some very useful replies- from memory there were no fresh pads fitted before original calipers packed up, the n/s does tend to stick.
I will need to check re which replacement caliper was fitted where, but they are both more than 12 months old so it is academic now.
I will get back to the service manager re seal kits - he reckons the calipers can only be factory rebuilt, even at £78 an hour for labour it would be substantially cheaper to rebuild!

atb
Mike