Compensator Valves

[Mattr5uk 20 5 Cars]

Can these be stripped and refurbed/freed up as I think both mine are playing up on my 1.9. New rear discs and pads but after a few hard pumps on the brakes the o/s holds up a little on the brake rollers and the n/s is a bit lower than I'd like to see. With the new MOT regs this is going to cause a problem. I'm not convinced the callipers are a problem as the handbrake pulls up ok and they both wind back fine. Unable to bleed rear brakes ATM as both nipples are seized so im going to have to sort them when I take the compensators off anyway but I don't want to replace the compensators if they can be fixed? Has anyone had any joy sorting these? Excuse my life story as always

[Miles 331 1 Cars]

Not as far as I know as it's a sealed unit, It is odd thou I have replaced around 10 of these this year

[Mattr5uk 20 5 Cars]

Thought that would be the case. Where's the best place for replacements? I would expect to be changing a few more of them now the rear brake balance has been changed on the mot.

[TheReaperWaits 6 1 Cars]

When I went looking for new compensators I was quoted £75 each... Not wanting to spend that much i ended up redoing the brake lines without them.

[welshpug 1,655]

Crikey, i got some from gsf for less for a pair!

[TheReaperWaits 6 1 Cars]

Funnily enough I believe it was a GSF...

[welshpug 1,655]

that's odd, maybe the price has gone up, even the pair I got from a Bosch stockist on special order for my ZX from Germany was under £100 the pair last year (look the same, 50% higher braking pressure!)

[base-1 17]

GSF website says £50.40 each at the moment, suppose if you can get trade it would be under a ton for two

[welshpug 1,655]

indeed, I never go by the website nor do the guys in the local branch!

[Mattr5uk 20 5 Cars]

Well they definitely cannot be stripped down, cut one up today to have a look. Pretty crappy inside, managed to source 2 new Bosch ones from Ecp. Going to see how the rears perform on the rollers with the valves removed before I fit them.

[Anthony 1,002]

What front brakes are you running? If they're standard 1.9 GTi then you'll have the rears locking prematurely without the compensators, although a compensator-less setup does work well with say GTi-6 brakes on the front in my experience.

 

Obviously if you're purely testing to see some caparitive numbers on the brake rollers then that's fine.

[Mattr5uk 20 5 Cars]

Do they lock up undriveably early? It was to see what difference it made on the readings and see if it was the cause of the bind. If it wasn't likely to cause a problem I would keep it like it but its on standard 1.9 set up so looks like its going cause an issue.

[TheReaperWaits 6 1 Cars]

After I removed mine the fronts would always lock before the rears would. Went through brake checks no problem... Not saying it won't do what Anthony says. Just sharing my personal experience.