Oh ! so the Budget upgrade has not quite been the case after all?


This is often the case, replacing just the calipers and pads on rotors worn from other pads and calipers is not ideal, but did you use / test them? or have you just decided to change the rotors anyway ?

I'm not sure where your heard / read/ seen the EBC Red pads are more sensitive to warping, I'm 99.9% sure this is complete tosh!

I tried them once (Red & Green) and could not get any bite from either...


R

 

These are maintenance costs that I'd have to pay at some point, regardless of brake setup. NA rotors are cheap and most people won't have to touch theirs if they did this mod.

I should clarify my comment about the Redstuff pads - I read reviews on other forums prior to purchasing and breaking these pads in correctly is important to keeping them quiet. I'll pass on having noisy brakes on a street car.

 

how come not just using off the shelf Volvo pads?

 

No real reason, they'd work fine albeit generate more dust. These are performance street pads, that's the direction I've been going with the whole car.

 

So seat of the pants are these an upgrade or not?

 

I actually just now got a few hours to work on the cars today, and I bled the calipers as well as refurbed the dust shields and finished the wheel bearings. But thanks to Fedex dumbf***ery, my rotors won't be here till tomorrow. I'll post results as soon as I get this all put back togerher.

Edit: while I'm talking about bleeding, these calipers use a 1/4" wrench on the valves and you'll need smaller plastic tube for the nipple, relative to stock. I had some extra tubing from a 944 windshield washer system, which was a perfect fit (1/4" maybe?)

 

Next question, which caliper has the bigger pads?

 

The pads are almost exactly the same size.

 

Ran into 2 snags. Tonight I finally got the new rotors and went ahead and installed them. Went perfectly, except my drivers side rotor isn't true... I torqued the 5 bolts/nuts to spec in a star pattern, and there's still a slight amount of runout. I can see the issue by shining a light behind the mating surfaces between the hub and rotor... Maybe a thousandth or so. Just enough to cause issues. Go figure.

The other issue is more related to this swap. I decided to say screw it and go for a drive anyway, but got a spongy pedal. I know I bled these right using a Motive power bleeder. I yanked the wheels and found this (attached image). I figure I need to add a flat washer between the caliper and knuckle at each mounting point to even that out. If you can't tell from the picture, 1 pad is flush on the rotor and the other is a mm or 2 away. With the pistons retracted, they looked perfectly even.

Pretty butthurt because I have to be up at 4am for work travel and won't be back for 3 weeks. Not happy....but this is shelved until then. I guess I should have waited until I 100% finished to post this writeup.

 

That back pad that's not touching Seems like it's being held captive by the clip that goes through the pin. Might look there and see if you have enough pin if you clip it between the back of the brake pad and the caliper.

 

Oh dear the joys of modifications, I can see the centreline of the caliper is not central to the rotor, also it looks like the pads overhang the rotor perimeter? this is not good either as it means the pistons are not in the designed position and less pad contact etc...


R

 

R, they do look centred to me, however, the right pad is a few mm away from the rotor which makes it look like it overhangs the perimeter. It took me a while to actually see this.

Nobody ever argued that this setup would even get close to yours, though.
(By the way, it'd be nice if you could do a write-up on your system with links to manufacturers and part numbers -especially on the mounting brackets.)

 

The Comment "The Joys of Modifications" was written as my set up also has had many teething problems, similar to these with pad overhang, spongy pedal, run out, and pad alignment !


Both front and rear brackets were sourced from different countries and both were from companies that specialise in VW Transporters which some people use 944 stubs / hubs and brakes.


All 4 brackets had to be cut and modified, to make them fit and the rear pads also had to be trimmed as they overhung the rotor perimeter.


The front pads fit well on the rotor but they are slimmer than OE and do not cover the full depth close to the centre bell etc..


Unless fixed calipers are 100% aligned a spongy pedal is evident, run out can often not be the actual rotor but the bolted on disc and hub arrangement, and I have still have some dragging on one section of the discs but I'm considering getting the rotors skimmed on car with a machine.


So 4 years ago I couldn't find a dedicated Brake Kit for the front or rear and I'm unsure if there is one available still ? that's fits perfectly otherwise like me and Odonnell there's plenty of faffing and juggling to be done to make other solutions work well..


R


R

 

MG944, good eye! I checked it out and while it's hard to see, the spring clip is inboard of those clips.

Roger, yessir teething problems seem to be part of the deal with modifications but it's almost always worth it. I also agree the issue is with the hub/rotor interface... It seems to not be perfectly flush. When I return, I'll take fine grit sandpaper to the surfaces on the hub and reassemble. There must be an imperfection. This was the rotor with wobble, leasing me to replace them originally.

 

The small amount of rotor wobble could also be attributed to less than wonderful hub bearings. The rotor needs to go on a surface plate for further checkout/regrinding. I think that pedal judder can be as little as 5 thou warpage.