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Old December 3rd 2013, 18:30
Clatter Clatter is offline
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Join Date: Sep 2006
Posts: 118
So, You wanna buy some Brembos, Eh?

Since Lanner just posted up and helped me so quick just now,
it made me realize how valuable this knowledge is we all share here.

So, I figured I would share a (hard) lesson I am re-learning about buying junk off of e-bay.

So here goes, the story of my 4-pot Brembos.

After perusing Lanner's site for the umpteenth time, I decided on the 944T setup and went shopping.
After a few over-priced (seemingly) sets coming and going,
I finally bought a set from Toronto for about $275 a couple of years ago.
They looked just dandy on the pictures, and the seller said they were tip-top.

The first thing I noticed is that one was from a different car.
luckily, it was the right caliper, but it was crusty, and a brownish color that the others weren't.
No big deal.

Then, it came time to get them apart...
It took almost a whole day, and a helper.
First, I bought a couple of the right metric Allen sockets from the tool truck.
The ones from my local hardware store weren't hard enough.
It took some soft-jaws in a big vise, a cheater bar, propane torch, a friend and some fancy language to get them apart.
The soft jaws on the vise were the most important part, because you need so much pressure, that holding them would chew them up.

Even so, I broke a couple caliper half bolts.
Plus, a couple heads snapped off the little screws that hold the pad guide plates in place.
Luckily again, there is a prototype machine shop in the area that will do little jobs, and they saved my sorry ass on that one.
Using an EDM 'disintegrator'...

Another little trick I used, which came in real handy, is buying a bunch of little NPT brass pipe plugs at the hardware store.
You have to be gentle with them, and not screw them in tight _at_all_ because they are an NPT thread, not the correct metric thread, and can mess things up, but they work for this purpose.
One use was to plug the holes off from getting paint stripper inside, when it was used to remove the clear coat.
Again it was handy when removing the pistons with compressed air.
Also had an NPT blow nozzle which allowed the nozzle to thread tight.
These crusty pistons never would have come out with hand pressure just sealing the nozzle in...


Another thing was, the calipers had been banged around pretty good, some of them.
I spent a while with different files getting them smoother.


When the things were finally blasted, the corrosive nature of the Toronto winters showed it's ugly head.


Now, the damage here sucks and blows for sure, but the calipers are still use-able, so used they will get.
The powder-coater will fill a lot of this.
Can't turn back at this point, right??

Another not fun thing was the pistons got some corrosion too...

unlike the calipers, these are not useable, but, luckily, I found a place to get them for a good price.
This place rocks...
http://store.zeckhausen.com/catalog/...roducts_id=510
They also have the rebuild kits at less than half of what the dealer would charge, plus their service _rocks_. I love Zeckhausen Racing. They made this whole project possible for a poor fool like me.

The cross-over pipes were damaged, and/or crusty/ugly, so they are to be sourced next.

The broken bolts from the caliper halves were almost $50 ea.

And, I sent all of the hardware out to be white cad coated, because it was crusty, but save-able.

So, long story short, inspect your used Brembos very, very carefully.
Get them in your hand and pull them apart right away if you can.
My mistake in not getting to them for a couple of years.
They looked OK at first, honest....
Be ready to dump some cake in them,
Watch out for east coast corrosion,
And never look lightly at a nice set of them suckers again...
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