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Porsche Brembo brake conversion

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  • Porsche Brembo brake conversion

    Sorry for the delay with posting this but had a bit of a delay recieving the brackets from Germany!! :-(

    The main reason for wanting to do change the brakes was that whilst the oem system is perfectly good for road use, I found that on track i was getting a certain amount of fade. Another thing i wanted to change was the way the brakes seemed to be a little fierce in intial application causing a certain amount of 'dive' and weight transfer.

    Having had AP racing calipers and discs on my Subaru, I know what a good product they are but at £1500-£1800 decided that i could acheive what i wanted in a brake set up without going the 'whole hog' so to speak with a much lower outlay.

    I decided on Porsche 996/997 Carrera Brembo calipers as they were considerably lighter, a better/modern design and only a slightly bigger piston area which would hopefully mean compatability with the oem master cylinder. Another big advantage of these calipers is that they have a smaller leading piston which will reduce the 'grabbing' i dislike with the oem coupe brakes. I managed to source a very good condition pair in Germany using Ebay for the very reasonable price of £185 :mrgreen: . I had thought i would have to recondition a used set of calipers but, due to their great condition, this was not needed.

    As far as discs went, i went for some new e46 M3 CSL one's as they are a straight fit to the coupe hub and at 345mm with cross drilled holes should considerably aid cooling during track use. Another benefit of these is that like the oem coupe discs they are a floating disc. These were bought from my local dealer for the very reasonable price of £227 incl vat ;)

    Obviously the calipers were not designed for the coupe being radial mount as opposed to the oem lug mount and thus required a 'one off' mounting bracket. I could have gone to an automative engineering company in the Uk to make these but found that for them to carry out all the measurements, fabrication etc would have cost a small fortune unless i was ordering a large batch of them. By pure chance i came across an automative engineering company in Germany who specialise in the fabrication of bespoke brake components. They have produced these brackets for this very conversion for some German coupe owners so were able to offer a tried and tested product, taking a lot of hassle out of the process for me. Also being specialists in this area it was nice to know that the product was made from a suitable heat treated material and strength tested for the forces it would be subject to from the calipers. These turned out to be the most expensive part of the whole set up at £302 delivered but then again the most important to get just right. :shock:

    An additional cost was having to have the mounting flats of the calipers machined to remove 5mm to allow for better disc overlap. Obviously this has to be done exactly right otherwise the caliper would not sit square to the disc. This was done at a local Engineering company for £40.

    Fitting was fairly straight forward with my goodridge lines being retained and only a couple of 'hurdles' to over come.

    The first was that the supplied caliper bolts were about .8mm too long so that just as i thought the caliper was 'nipping down' , what was really happening was that the end of the bolt was making contact with the side of the oem hub mounts causing the caliper to twist very slightly. This was easily sorted by just turning down the bolt by 2mm.
    The second problem was that when i tried to fit some brand new pads, there wasn't enough room between the fully returned piston and the disc due to the CSL discs being a couple of mm thicker than the Porsche ones. Luckily my friends garage has a pad skimming machine, so taking a bit of material of the pads soon sorted that! At that time i decided to fit the almost worn out oem Porsche pads to check if the pedal position would drop(ie if the master cylinder was compatable) but the position was exactly the same. ;)

    I went out to road test the set up and bed in the new pads and was very pleased with the results. The intitial application of brakes at speed no longer results in the brakes feeling like they are 'grabbing' but just progressive retardation. As to how well they resist fade i will have to wait until my next trackday, but having driven a number of Porsche 996's on track without fade i am hopefull of success.

    Few pics






    Final costings were £750 using Porsche oem pads but i added some Pagid RS pads which added another £140.
    Last edited by chippy; 24-10-2008, 05:27 PM.
    Black S50

  • #2
    Nice one dude!
    ill be asking you questions when i do mine!

    Comment


    • #3
      Superb stuff dude, very reasonable price and look the bollocks too :shock:

      My to do list has just got slightly longer ;)

      Current - BMW M6
      Previous - Estoril S50 '98

      KW V3's, ACS Splitters, H&R ARB's, Rogue Engineering rear top mounts,
      Carbon Induction kit, Supersprint Exhaust, BBS 19" CH alloys, Strong Strut

      Comment


      • #4
        Fantastic,


        Now wheres my chequebook!

        Comment


        • #5
          Well done Tony. They do look good and I'm sure they stop well too as I have experienced these brakes on Porsches.

          Comment


          • #6
            Nice one Tony. Do the CSL discs fit straight on? Or are they too big for OEM calipers? I need new discs and would like to fit these. Or would I be better of sticking to OEM?
            From Z3 MC to Z4 MC... glad to be back

            Comment


            • #7
              Originally posted by dalecan
              Nice one Tony. Do the CSL discs fit straight on? Or are they too big for OEM calipers? I need new discs and would like to fit these. Or would I be better of sticking to OEM?
              you would need new caliper brackets like the ones Tony had made up

              Comment


              • #8
                Originally posted by dalecan
                Nice one Tony. Do the CSL discs fit straight on? Or are they too big for OEM calipers? I need new discs and would like to fit these. Or would I be better of sticking to OEM?
                Dale
                As Ben has stated the CSL discs are over 30mm larger in diameter so the oem calipers would need spacing accordingly. IMHO it would not be worth the hassle and cost to get these to fit as the standard coupe disc is good quality already. ;)
                Black S50

                Comment


                • #9
                  Thanks boys ;)
                  From Z3 MC to Z4 MC... glad to be back

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Managed to get out at the weekend and do some proper testing now that everything is bedded in :twisted:

                    From all speed ranges, 50-0, 80-0, 120-0 etc, the brakes have much more 'feel' to them and a greatly improved progression from part braking to full braking.

                    Overall, although it was a lot of hassle doing a 'one off' instalation, i'm really pleased with the set up and is definately an improvemant on OEM.

                    The final test will be to see if their is any fade after 'abusing' them at a trackday. :mrgreen:
                    Black S50

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      On this subject, I am doing the same "mod" to my car at present, although I went for the cheaper option of obtaining the brackets from Germany in their "raw" form, in other words, blanks which require machining, it's a saving of about 180 quid, but only if you do the work yourself, if you get an engineering company to machine them for you then you would probably not save anything as there is quite a bit of machining.
                      As Chippy said, this is quite a tricky mod to do yourself, so unless you are confident in your abilities then leave it to someone else.
                      The one thing that I will add, is that you need to purchase longer brake lines, as the original ones are about an inch too short, good time to have some braided ones made up.
                      My brackets are away at the moment being electro-plated, and the calipers are being sprayed where I machined them, so hopefully everything will be back early next week for me to fit, I will road test and report back then.
                      One thing I will say, they look bloody good on the car.

                      Steve.

                      PS. My thanx to Chippy for all his help in getting this mod done.
                      2002 phoenix yellow. "V3RY M" lives on, but on another beast.

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Originally posted by steve1
                        On this subject, I am doing the same "mod" to my car at present, although I went for the cheaper option of obtaining the brackets from Germany in their "raw" form, in other words, blanks which require machining, it's a saving of about 180 quid, but only if you do the work yourself, if you get an engineering company to machine them for you then you would probably not save anything as there is quite a bit of machining.
                        As Chippy said, this is quite a tricky mod to do yourself, so unless you are confident in your abilities then leave it to someone else.
                        The one thing that I will add, is that you need to purchase longer brake lines, as the original ones are about an inch too short, good time to have some braided ones made up.
                        My brackets are away at the moment being electro-plated, and the calipers are being sprayed where I machined them, so hopefully everything will be back early next week for me to fit, I will road test and report back then.
                        One thing I will say, they look bloody good on the car.

                        Steve.

                        PS. My thanx to Chippy for all his help in getting this mod done.
                        Good work Steve :!:
                        Ex 'V3RY M - MCoupe track monster'
                        New toys

                        Porsche widebody project

                        Cayenne Diesel

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          All done now, brackets came back early from platers, have only had chance to run it down the road tonight, but what i can say is WOW, what a difference, it gives you that sicky feeling when you really stamp on them, like when you go on one of those theme park rides, and the pads are not even scrubbed in yet.
                          Have a week off coming up, so I will get out and give it a real good test, but from first experiences, it's well worth doing.

                          Steve.
                          2002 phoenix yellow. "V3RY M" lives on, but on another beast.

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Well done Steve

                            I think i may do this upgrade as well, as my front discs need replacing, a few questions though

                            1/ will this upgrade be ok with Standard 17" rims?
                            2/ Do I just do a search for Porsche 996/997 Carrera Brembo calipers?
                            2/ I think i'll get the ready machined brackets, can you let me have the info please
                            3/ Could i use the company that skimmed the calipers and pads and trimmed the bolts, if so, again could I have the details
                            4/ why isnt this called the 'chippy Mod' 8-)

                            Thanks
                            looking

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              1) Might work if you stuck to the standard diameter discs
                              2)
                              3)
                              4) Because that would just be gay :-P :mrgreen:


                              As for running CSL discs on standard calipers, my experience of doing similar on my 205GTi is that it IS worthwhile as the extra leverage increases braking forces a lot and the bigger disc will make the setup less susceptible to fade. Won't be as good as running the multi piston calipers but it would be a good upgrade IMO. All that would be needed (apart from bigger wheels!) would be spacer brackets which could be made quite cheaply, measure how much you need to space and get a company to CNC machine them.

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