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.
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.
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