Since i've had the rangey, i've always been unimpressed by the brakes. I asked on here about it and stripped and greased up all four calipers but it was still rubbish. They did ofcourse work, and if you stood on the pedal HARD it stopped on a dime, but the pedal effort always felt too high for the complexity of the braking system. I had assumed it was simply down to my experience with much newer cars, which tend to have a lot more powerful brakes than stuff from the 90's.

So fast forward a bit, my rear calipers been sticking on and off for a few months. It was winter and the weather is poop, so i've been ignoring it, and it "fixed itself" a few times and wasnt a huge issue. You could drive hundreds of miles and the disk would get hot, but not smoking or completely siezed on level. At the weekend i finally fitted a new caliper, bled up that corner and took it out for a test...

And the first thing i noticed was a MASSIVE reduction in pedal effort, the brakes actually felt good.

Given the rear brakes do so little i cant see how fixing that one caliper can have made a difference, so why has it changed so much?!

Rear brakes are actually worth having!

No idea but I wouldn't just do one caliper on an axle I'd always do them in pairs. Sounds like you need to pull the other 3 apart.

I changed all my pads myself, but due to no familiarity with the P38 back then, I had my brakes bled 3 years ago and it went from ok braking to bloody hell! It stops quicker than my TT

The opposite caliper is pretty new (its still shiney silver) and must have been replaced by the previous owner shortly before i bought it. Clearly he should have done both, but has presumably done the bare minimum to get it working again. I would normally have replaced the pair, but since it was already done i just did the one.

When i got it i fully bled the system using the instructions online, as the pedal was in the floor and the accumulator was burst. This time (since it was only one rear caliper) i simply switched the ignition on, got an assistant to press the brake pedal, and opened the rear nipple for 5 seconds and that was it.

I'm sure i could go round the rest of the car, and give it new disks and pads etc etc, but its now working better than it ever has, the pads are all fine, and the disks are pretty new looking with minimal lip. And the money would be better spent fixing other bits like the front balljoints!

I was just intriqued why fixing one caliper has transformed the brakes to such an extent.

Maybe the PO didn't bleed it very well when he replaced the other rear?
They do stop well when sorted, that's for sure.