Rear brake pad pins stuck

[rider123]

Well the title says it all. I've been trying to replace my rear brake pads, the front was easy as pie, however some phucking genius at Suzuki decided to have a blind hole for these pad pins to sit in so you can't drift them out. They were supposed to be designed so you didn't have to take off the caliper, I guess they figured the pad pins would slide easily and not get stuck for the rest of eternity. Any ideas short of having to pull the caliper apart to get these things out of there? Should I drill small witness holes in the back of the caliper so I can drift out the pins? Or maybe buy new pins and hack saw them out? Anyone else having problems with the rear pins?

[pmackie]

Maybe small vice grips and get them to turn first?

[rider123]

Yeah going to try that route. Put some penetrating oil on the pins lets see what happens. Front brakes....10 mins. Rear who knows?

[rider123]

Well in the end I drilled some witness holes on the other side of the caliper and was able to get one out. The other one was stuck so bad I actually had to split the caliper to fit the pads on there. Oh well. At least they are on there. Now it's bleeding fun time for the brakes. If you guys have them stuck, splitting the calipers does work but it's a bit of a pain. Loosen the allen bolts to split the calipers while it's still on the bike so you have enough torque to get them off there. They have loctite from the factory so you need alot of strength to get them off. My last set of pads are, believe it or not, the originals from when I bought the bike and they still had about .8 mm of pad left. So hopefully these newer, better pads will last me 7 years so I won't have to go through the pain again.

[BanditAllan]

I was going to suggest drilling some small holes on the back end and use a small drift to drive them out from the back, but you beat me to it.
You might want to smear some anti-seize compound on the caliper pins helps to prevent seizing in the future.