Originally Posted by Klondike

Look on the surface of the piston where it contacts the pads. If it has a couple of little holes in the surface, they are the ratcheting type that keeps the E-brake from going slack as the pads wear. Most auto stores sell a multi-tool that fits a 3/8" ratchet. It has several patterns and spacing of little studs that fit in those piston holes. Clean off the piston rubber bellows so it can slip on the piston when it is turned, and you just screw the piston back down into the caliper like a bolt until the pads will fit over the rotor.
Open the bleeder like they said above so the nasty old fluid doesn't go back up the brake lines.

Originally Posted by rfain1952

This style is not a ratcheting type, I disconnected the e-brake and that made no difference, also the e-brake was against a stop and not pushing on the pads. The piston moves freely, just does not appear to go in far enough to get on new pads. Going to take a second look this weekend. I looked at pics of the caliper assembly. I have seen several comments on nthis forum, but no hard here is what is wrong.Thanks

Originally Posted by Smokeysvette

I'll be closely watching this thread as I plan on doing a full brake job on my car very soon. I have about 35% left and that's when I like to replace pads. I usually open the master cylinder or bleeder and just collapse my calipers very slowly by using a very large channel lock pliers.

Originally Posted by hooked073

make sure the park brake cable has slack in it. To be honest I hate the calipers on the back of these things. I have seen so many problems by pushing the pistons back in with these that I no longer do it. I buy loaded calipers and replace the thw lines and calipers

Originally Posted by rfain1952

I even disconnected the e-brake completely, going to let the Chevy dealer do it and see what the trick is.

Originally Posted by seijack

Listen carefully, almost all REAR brake calipers that have an e-brake on them need a special tool to fully seat the piston back into the piston bore. It can NOT be seated by using a c clamp. You must install the special tool on a
3/8 ratchet and engage the tools **** into the piston. This will allow you to screw the piston back into the bore. I believe you need to turn the piston clockwise to get piston back into the bore so you can install the pads in the caliper and the caliper over the rotor . When installing the pads in the rear caliper you must line up the tit on back of the pad with a slot in the face of the piston. This keeps the piston from rotating when the brakes are applied. Trust me, I used to work for a brake manufacturer....

Originally Posted by newbie2vette

I guess I was lucky when I replaced all the brake pads on my 92, I used a medium size "C" clamp to compress the piston. Oh yeah, before I do any brake job. I use my special tool to suck the fluid from the reservoir so when you compress the caliper piston dirty brake fluid fill some what fill the reservoir, then suck that out also.

Originally Posted by rfain1952

I gave up and took it to the Chevy dealer...all the tech did was to loosen the bracket and put the inboard pad in first, it is tight but it seems maybe the trick is to loosen the bracket. i will give that a try but will be a few miles down the road.

Originally Posted by hcbph

I'm old school but I've had to loosen the bracket on almost every vehicle I've put brakes into, still do it today. Once on, just tighten everything up. Don't know if it's supposed to be required or not, just seems to be a fact of life on the ones I've worked on.

Originally Posted by Paul Workman

I just installed new pads on my 90 ZR-1, and where the rear passenger side went on OK, the driver's side took a little tapping on the caliper housing to seat the caliper.

I didn't think that was right. So, this thread has my attention. But, when you refer to loosening the "bracket", I'm not sure what you're talking about. At the risk of sounding ignorant, what bracket??

Thanks in advance.