Motors Brake overhaul

It looks like I will have the new seals and boots for the rear calipers on Saturday at the earliest with the fronts coming in the next couple of weeks as Suzuki have them on back-order.

Also my Black Diamond discs haven't turned up yet after a lot of messing around getting them ordered. In the meantime my friend and founder of one of the Cappuccino owners clubs has found that 3G Brakes now do rear discs for my car too, and they work out cheaper than the Black Diamonds! I was after 3G fronts originally but opted for the Black Diamonds so I could have matching rear discs. The payment hasn't been processed yet so I'm going to see if I can cancel the order and go for the cheaper, equally-good and better-looking 3G discs all round instead. Here's hoping...

 

Good luck .

Mine are painted up now, the car needs a minor repair then I can fit them .

Not the neatest paintjob but it'll do the trick:

 

Well, the bad news is i managed to scuff some of the paint off, the good news is that I don't care, and that they're almost ready to fit to the car. I just need to find my long-nosed pliers to tease the clips into place .





As you can see in the last pic, both clips arent in fully on the left hand sides, but some perseverance with the long nosed pliers should fix that .

 

Well my grooved discs haven't arrived yet, though I managed to cancel the Black Diamond order so I'll be getting the 3G ones I wanted. I'm also waiting on a piston seal for one of the front calipers as they're on back order at Suzuki. With a bit of luck I'll be able to get started on the refurbishment next weekend.

I felt like doing some work on the car today though so I put my Redstuff front pads on. It gave me a chance to have a proper look at the front calipers and although on the whole they're in good nick, the piston on both calipers had a fair amount of corrosion around then end that should be satisfying to clean up.

I also found out that I can't get my trolley jack under the central front jack point without raising the car by 1cm or so first since it's just too low!

 

Unfortunately the forecast for tomorrow is rain, else I'd be fitting mine .

 

i'd have thought red stuff are a bit overkill for a light street car

on the jacking front, get a couple pieces of wood and drive the front wheels on to them and it'll solve your clearance problems

 

Redstuff are probably overkill, yes, but I'll see how they go as they bed in. They weren't expensive anyway so I can always just get a set of Greenstuff instead if needs be. The good thing is they should start to work better as they warm up when I'm having a spirited drive down those NSL B-roads.

At least I didn't go for the 4-pot Wilwood floating-disc conversion some owners have done, apparently that takes some serious work to get up to temperature (plus needs 16" wheels to fit under).

To be honest it's probably easier to just use the crap jack in the boot of the car to get the extra clearance rather than using planks.

 

I can quote a guy I consider a good source of car information as saying "I could make better pads out of a cornflakes packet than greenstuff" .

Based upon reputation I'd reccomend Ferodo DS2000's or a suitable mintex pad over greenstuff.

 

If you can find Ferodo, Mintex or Pagid pads for my car then I'd definitely consider trying them The only ones available in the UK that anyone in the owners club has found so far are standard ones, EBC Greenstuff and EBC Redstuff. A fair few Capp owners have used Greenstuff and found them to be quite good. I hear a lot of very mixed feedback about EBC pads in general.

 

A friend of mine bought greenstuff and EBC discs for his astra, he removed the lot a few days later and the discs were warped .


Get me a picture and dimensions of your pads. Also, can you fit bigger discs pads and calipers off another suzuki like you can with vauxhall-> vauxhall?

Have you phoned demon tweeks?

 

I'm not using EBC discs, I'll be using 3G 10-groove ones.

Well the front pads and discs are the same as the 1989-1994 Suzuki Swift (non-GTI models). I don't know of any straight conversion available, I've looked into the obvious things like Swift GTI brakes myself and various people in the owners clubs have looked around at the options a number of times and haven't turned anything up.

Picture of pads

 

I refuse to accept that there are no other options.

(but I do accept that the one I'm thinking of is expensive.)

 

There are other options like getting some calipers and fabricating a mount, but like you say they're expensive unless I have the skills/tools/time to do all the work myself which I don't. Or replacing the hubs but again I don't know of any easy conversions.

A long way to go just to avoid using EBC pads

 

i've used greenstuff, redstuff, ferodo ds2500 and mintex on the crx for trackdays and found them all to work good enough with no glazing or fade.

for light cars i don't think it matters as much

 

See what I mean about mixes opinions Plenty of people say they're perfectly good pads, plenty of others say they suck bum. Seem fine to me so far!

 

Well, me and a friend started to fit mine today, and after a few hiccups one is on, with the wheel on, but it needed a lot more than the 'just a little' grinding I was told to get this far, and still needs a little more taking off in one place. It got too late to make lots of noise with the angle grinder so we had to call it a night .

 

Sounds like a tight fit!

 

It really is, I'll get pics when I can. Might not be able to get to my mates house where the car is to finish it for a few days though .

 

Its a bit close:


.

Intending to stick some kurust on the naked area tonight .

 

Wow, that really is tight! Make sure you don't use stick-on balancing weights