brake swap questions

[Fehrion_sit]

on my 1g eclipse i have single piston calipers and with all the proformance mods i have i think its time to do a brake upgrade to keep myself safe. ive read through vfaqs and i want to do the dual piston swap from a 3000gt or 2g dsm. i would like an easy bolt on im working out of my garage.

what are some of the parts ill need: mounting? new lines? banjo fittings?

what year and car am i looking to pull these from? (93+)

what are some common problems i should expect?


guidence is welcome!

-mike
1990 eclipse gsx 16g swap

 

[voyageur]

Just finished upgrading my brakes. The 93-94 front calipers are the two piston front calipers that are direct bolt on. They use the same type of brake lhoses as your car (not banjo bolts). I replaced all rotors, calipers, brake lines. Here's some of the problems I had:

(1) finding the brackets for the front brakes. Your current bracket will not work. Most of the parts stores, Autozone, O'reilly, Advance, did not have the bracket. I was able to get a right front caliper with bracket from O'reillys--special order. I had to get the left front bracket from mitsubishigraveyard for $35. If you are replacing the brake hoses you might want to get a 95+ caliper with banjo fitting (I think) and then buy brake hoses with banjo fittings. This option might make it easier to find caliper bracket, but I'm not sure.

(2) Had a really tough time getting brake hard line fitting off without stripping nut. I used cheap 10mm hose wrench. You might have better luck with higher quality hose wrench. I also had to buy a $20 mini-torch at home depot to heat up fitting to get it to budge. There was so much rust and crap on this fitting that soaking it in PB blaster had no effect, and was just a waste of time.

(3) My driver side rear brake line cracked (it was rusted and had broken free of its clip to hold it in place and had been rubbing on a bolt, so it was a just a matter of time before it started leaking). So I had to splice in some a piece of new hard brake line. I used a double flair tool for the splice and it worked. Some people use a compression fitting for the splice, but apparently it's not designed for the pressures seen with brake lines. This problem took me along time to figure out since I'm really not a mechanic, but I read a lot about it and practiced making double flairs on 3/16" tube and it worked out ok.

Good luck, it's really not too hard.

 

[jmartinez1228]

When i did my big brake swap I just got the 93-94 calipers with the brackets. You need the brackets to make it work. It may even be worth to just rebuild the calipers while you have them out so you have fresh calipers to drop in.

I also just went and got stainless steel brake lines since the ones on the car are usually rotted and will crack or break if you dont take them off carefully. Once you get that then all you need is to buy rotors and pads for a 93-94.

Total cost of upgrade was a little over $250 depending on how much you pay for the calipers and brackets. You can usually find them for under $100. It will cost more with stainless lines rather then factory lines.

Install is simple you take the caliper and bracket off and install the new bracket and caliper, then everything else is just like you normally would do brakes.

 

[Fehrion_sit]

can someone show me a picture bc I'm confused between the mounting bracket and other peices ...?

 

[jmartinez1228]

http://www.ilostmymind.com/manuals/DSM_manual/vfaq/proj-pics/BigBrakes/oldvsnew.jpg

The brackets are the pieces on the top right corner. THey attach to the hub and the caliper attaches to the bracket.

You can also see the difference in size between a set of 1ga brakes and the 93-94 brakes

 

[voyageur]

Yea, calling it a mounting bracket threw me off too. I was thinking that it was a little "L" shaped thing that fit on either side of the caliper. It is not. It's basically half of the caliper and it holds the brake pads. So there's the caliper body (the part with the piston) and then theres the "bracket" the part that holds the pads. Haynes manual also calls it a "torque plate". You should be able to find a pic, now that you know what your looking for.

 

[jmartinez1228]

Um the link that I just put up shows everything.

What other name do you want me to call the part that the caliper holds on to? If you do a search on big brake upgrades most of them will say "caliper" and "mounting brackets".