That's a good bet, to inspect, polish and lube the slider parts on your car now. Costs you nothing but time. But while the caliper is off only on one side, the one you are working on, I'd work on the piston too. Your caliper should be a single piston so this will be easier than 2 or 4 piston calipers. Since this is an intermittent problem I'll bet your piston isn't totally frozen in place, so this might seem like a waste of time. Take that caliper off and put a piece of wood where the pads would go, something wide enough to stop the piston from coming out of the caliper. If it does you are in for a lot of pain and suffering. You should hold the caliper in your hand, then get a helper to get in the car and press on the brake pedal. This will push the piston out, and if frozen, will free it up. Let it come out far enough to work it through but not too far that you encounter difficulty in pressing it back in with channel locks or a large C clamp. If you let it come out far enough so that only 10% is left in the caliper, it can try and **** sideways on you and be difficult to press back in. Mainly, this is a safety margin you need to make sure it doesn't come out of the caliper, nightmare if it does. Then you have to buy that caliper after all, or rebuild it. So you repeat this process, press it in, push it out. If you want to pull that dust boot away from piston and caliper, you can use some brake grease that is compatible with brake fluid and put that on the piston as you do this.

This won't take too much extra time to do, and if both are done and you still have the problem then I'd go with replacing both brake hoses. Knowing if it's a brake hose can really only be tested with a consistent problem. For example, say the wheel is always dragging, you put it in the air and spin it and it doesn't spin near so easy as the other side. If you relieve pressure in the caliper by backing out the bleeding nipple and the wheel then spins freely, then you know that brake hose is bad.

 

So I was looking for the parts to rebuild locally as I don't have anything to do the next few days and decided to look on NAPA. Turns out they have reman'd brake calipers for $63...I bought it on the spot, definitely not worth messing with over $63. Should the problem persist, I'll go ahead and replace the lines.
Thanks guys!

 

does the remanuf unit come with sliders? I can't remember as I replaced a caliper several years ago. if it doesn't come with sliders, you will still need to clean the old ones up.

 

Yep, came with everything except pads. Working great so far! Definitely worth the $60 not to deal with it