Brembo 4 Pot 'Big Brakes'
I think I talked about 4 pots earlier in this thread when posting about my OE caliper refurb. I wanted them then and I still want them now! To be clear, I don't
need these. My refurbished calipers have proven more than capable of everything I've asked of them. Paired with DS2500's, if anything I actually find them to far surpass my road going needs. So why the 4 pots? Why not! I love the look of them and I was never truly satisfied by refurbishing my OE calipers. I've built the conversion kit up over a few months to spread the cost and also to give me time to find the best deals as well as to have time do things.
First things first, the calipers. I picked up a single 225 caliper from ebay and then (I thought) found its perfect pair! A mint condition caliper that needed no refurbing at all. Only problem was, it was for a 265! Despite a bad start to the project I managed to find someone braking a Megane 225 locally and picked up the calipers from him for the tidy sum of just £90. They were definitely in need of a refurb when I got them, very dirty but not too bad on the corrosion front just some pitting on the inside areas where the disc spins through. A couple of the dust seals had seen better days from visual inspection, but the link pipes looked to be in good form, if a little tatty.
The very first job was to remove the pad pins. One came out fine, one came out with some persuasion using a hammer and some mole grips and the other two had to be cut with a hack saw and the persuaded to part ways with the caliper. It wasn't really as bad as I've seen people make out it is, not once I'd figured out a technique at least.
After that they were given a scrub with degreaser a wire brush, a nail brush and some rags to remove the dust etc caked on.
[imghttp://i1378.photobucket.com/albums/ah95/Chaski453/4%20pots/IMG_5155_zpsurb7f7eu.jpg][/img]
At this point, they sat around for a few weeks whilst I found a local powder coater I was confident in using and had done calipers before. I wasn't sure if I'd need to remove the seals & pistons so left them in. In the mean time I started picking up all the other parts necessary for the conversion. The brake lines in particular were a bargain at just over £40 delivered from France for custom Goodridge lines, which they sell off the peg over there! It must be a popular conversion for the Frenchies too! Hats off to
@optical for the cheap lines find.
I also picked up some 'Mr Pink' (of the MeganeSport club) stainless steel pad pins that use R-clips. They're thinner in design to the OE pins and rely on the R-clips to be help in place but should hopefully mean no ceasing. I uhmed and ahhed over whether I really needed these at £40 for the pair, but the quality is great and I have little to no doubt I'll be thankful when the next pad change comes around. I also picked up some stainless bleed screws from a CSOC member for a good price. The decals are 12 year high temp cut vinyl from eBay. I'm impressed with the quality of them as it was £4 for four (two in front size, two in rear size) delivered. The replacement seals were a no brainer from BiggRed again. They're a tiny bit dearer than some of the seal kits on eBay, but I wanted to stick with what I know and their customer service was great last time.
Eventually, I found some time to get to a powder coaters and spent some time removing the pistons and seals at their request so they could be chemically dipped. My apprehension before was that they'd shot blast them and I wanted to protect the caliper bores. I found a cork block normally used for sand paper was a really useful size/fit. Wiggling the pistons out with compressed air took some time and technique but I got there in the end!
If like me you have a cheap ebay air gun attachment for your compressor, I recommend using an elastic band wrapped tightly around the end of the metal nozzle. It makes a great seal flexible seal and it's considerably easier to get the air into the caliper in a controlled manner. I don't recommend rubber gloves! Way too fiddly...
After a quick two weeks being busy at work my calipers were ready for collection from the powder coaters. A great price at £50, they're much more used to doing large industrial pieces but I think they squeeze these little jobs into between the big ones. I went for RAL3020 VHT powder. It's not an
exact match for the Brembo red, but it's pretty damn close. I highly doubt anyone will notice unless the correct shade is right next to the RAL3020.
Unfortunately, they did forget to mask off a few of the mating surfaces but for the price and quality I wasn't bothered about having to scrape it off.
I gave the caliper a good clean, including the bores and couldn't resist putting the decals on for a sneak peak at the finished result!
I also found it interesting to compare the 225 caliper (left) to the 265 caliper (right) I have from a 2014 car. I think it's a great illustration of how fresh these are looking again!
It's also worth noting that the picture shows that Brembo have painted/coated the link pipes on the 265 caliper as standard from the factory. This is one of the reasons that I left the link pipes on mine in place, but it's also because I am sure that Brembo do it as an anti-corrosion measure to protect the link pipe.
With the bores cleaned it was time to get the rebuild under way, fit the new seals, reseat the pistons and fit their new dust covers. Having inspected each piston closely whilst out of the caliper, I decided I needed to replace one of them and at £13.04 or so each from BiggRed it hardly broke the bank to do so! the process was much if not completely identical to refurbishing my OE calipers, just on a smaller scale and more of them.
[imghttp://i1378.photobucket.com/albums/ah95/Chaski453/4%20pots/IMG_5198_zpsv12cz9l9.jpg][/img]
I offered the brake lines up (just finger tight) just for a quick check and also to keep dirt from making its way into the caliper hole as I don't have any proper bungs. A lot of fiddly scraping later and the mating faces for the bolts were cleaned off too.
I'm going to run them with Mintex 1144's this time round. That's not because I'm unimpressed by the DS2500's in my OE calipers - I am - but more because I just don't think I'm getting anywhere near how well they can perform and that the money is frankly wasted! The 1144 pads seem to get great reviews as a fast road pad with minimal tracking and that's exactly my usage having not made it onto a track still! It will be interesting to see how they fare, though it will be difficult to compare given the caliper change. I'll also be running the bigger 300mm scenic discs. The BBS' are 16's and I've got no intentions of trying to run them under 15's at any point, so I might as well go for the bigger disc. Unfortunately to get the best price, I had to order them from Italy and wait a week or so but it was a good £20+ saved (even after postage) so worth doing.
Once they arrived, they were destined to be painted. It's something I really regret not doing on the OE setup currently fitted to the car. Within weeks the hub areas exposed had a coating of surface rust and were generally looking a bit shabby. Keen not to make the same mistake twice, I masked the discs up for painting.
My top tip for anyone wanting to do this is to make sure you have a few fresh Stanley blades or similar to hand and to be patient! It takes so much long to mask them up than you think! To cover the inside hub faces, I masked the rear side of the disc entirely in straight lines and then cut out the circle at the edge of the pad swept area. This was then pushed inside, flat against the inside hub face and a Stanley blade (just the blade no knife handle) was used to trim the excess untidy bits off for a nice clean edge.
A little painting later...
...And then a little waiting for them to cure before peeling off the tape and they finally came out like this:
They're not 100% perfect, but there's no need to be as it's really just to try and help keep them looking a bit cleaner in general and when looking through the wheels. I did have some discussion with others as some people think that it would affect heat dissipation and thus be a bad thing to do. For my usage at least, I don't think that's really a consideration. I also wasnt swayed as a number of manufacturers now have OE discs that come with some sort of zinc based coating as standard. The paint I used is VHT Rust-Oleum Stove Paint. It's been fantastic stuff so far IME, as it dries quickly with a nice dark matt black finish. As it's designed for stoves, it has anti-corrosion properties built in and is rate for a good 600-650 celcius, so if my brakes are that hot then the paint having issues will be the least of my worries!!
I'm really happy with how they've turned out in the end and I can't wait to get them fitted to the car and bled through with some fresh ATE Typ200.