brake upgrades

[Jerry323]

does anyone know where i can get get 2 piston calipers to suit my 1.8 BA astina? also slotted disc rotors and braided brake lines? thanks

[Astro Boy]

Originally Posted by Jerry323

does anyone know where i can get get 2 piston calipers to suit my 1.8 BA astina?

why?!

also slotted disc rotors

Me...

and braided brake lines? thanks

Once again, why, but if you have to i know ABS service centres can make you up the legal ones... once again, if you get stuck, contact me and i can sort something out...

Why do you want two piston callipers? Lucas Pads, RBF600 fluid, and slotted rotors are all you'll EVER need for a road car, or weekend warrior... Even my rally car doesn't have the later, and being a left foot braker, i abuse them!

If your doing it for reasons other than performance, like bling or macca's cred, speak to Andy (twiggy), he's the only person here who has a decent excuse to have such a conversion, and unless there's an easy inter-model swap (like applause rear discs onto a charade, or smiley face ventilated discs onto a G200), then spend your money else where...

[Rupewrecht]

You can put the V6 hubs/discs/calipers on the 1.8 and get a 33% increase in braking area. And still keep the 4 stud pattern, apparently.

[CHiMPY]

Yeah, Rob did that. I think he used the stuff from a GTR not the V6 though..

[project.r.racing]

i'm only gonna say this once okay peoples - Mazda 323 Astina BA/BG front calipers are the same as Ford Falcon BA/BH rear calipers...

what fits on the rear of a falcon should fit on the front of a astina... don't quote me on this cos i haven't done the research yet. but both are 16V brakes. read on.

Originally Posted by Ford Falcon FPV Model's Brakes

Brakes & Safety
The power to stop you is provided by Performance Brembo 4 piston front brake calipers and single piston rear calipers. Cooling is enhanced with cross drilled brake rotors as standard. A Premium Brembo 6 piston front and 4 piston rear brake package is available as an option.

Performance Brakes
Up front, huge 355mm x 32mm cross drilled and slotted front rotors with Brembo 4 piston calipers and 328mm x 26mm cross drilled rear rotors with red single piston calipers and are standard on Force 6 and Force 8.

Premium Brakes For the ultimate in stopping power choose the FPV Premium brake package, which consists of 355mm x 32mm cross drilled and slotted front rotors with Brembo 6 piston calipers and 330mm x 28mm cross cross drilled rear rotors with Brembo 4 piston calipers. Optional Force 6 and Force 8.Brembo brakes are amongst the best brake packages in the world and are another example of FPV's commitment to Total Performance

ryan

[Cosmo Dude]

What is your motivation?
Do you want calipers with a piston on the outside to look good or do you want effective brakes?
Rx-7 SIV calipers are 4 piston, have the Mazda brand and can be fitted to an Astina with custom brackets (do a search)

[Aaron]

Ryan, are you sure about this? Really really sure? Or are you just saying this is the case becuase you saw a 16v cast into a Ford caliper and have a 16v cast into the Astina caliper?

FWIW the 1.8 Astinas (and matching KJ Lasers) use a really cheap and nasty caliper design that relies upon the knuckle forming the guides for the back pad and as such means you need to either cut this section of the knuckle off or mount a new/better caliper far enough away so that they don't foul on the casting. The latter is not really possible without some magic work, real magic work. Then you need to find a 4x100 disc with that diameter. The Focus ST170 300mm disc my be suitable but it needs to be bigger.

So as Dan says, giving the 1.8 knuckles the flick for v6 (or SP20) units will open up the caliper options as they utilise a caliper/bracket assembly. Ironically once you switch to this setup it's easier to get the FD calipers on, but you may need change your wheels to clear the outset of the calipers. Once you're at this point you can look at doing 2 piston calipers from a Millenia or MPV or even a Subie liberty. This all are twin piston to the rear of the rotor and will not give you more brake force but change the distribution of the force to be more even over the slightly larger pad size. There's still the 4 stud disc problem....

So then the smart option becomes using the 5 stud hubs, buying new wheels, and using the much wider range of 5x114 rotors. You're still hamstrung by back spacing as you'd ideally want to go well beyond the 55mm the stock discs have - maybe out to 67mm like FD brakes have so you could then run the FD calipers with any wheel. Not going to happen though.

So what else is there? The easy option is to use the v6/SP20 calipers and knuckles and leave it at that, they can be run with post 2001 270mm MX5 discs no worries. You pick up a considerably bigger swept area which is always a bonus!

If you are thinking going bigger then Focus rotors come back into play, in simple terms you'll need to move the calipers out about 10mm which is not going to be a pure raidal movement so you're need to design the relocation brackets such that they rotate the calipers slighlty to clear the knuckle castings - this is probably in the order of 30 degrees by the time you can mount them well enough to the satisfaction of a gingerbeer.

If the Falcon rumor is true then it's not going to change much as the only big options for the Falcons were Brembo calipers at the FRONT, the Brembo option, Premium rears and the stock rears only had a change from plain to slotted rotors (and to a bigger slotted rotor in the case of the Brembo option, (I believe they still run the same caliper on a relocation bracket). They're still 5 stud which means you're swapping wheels and hubs at the very least. It does paint an interestign picture if all the other geometry matches, except for the cost, the Brembo parts from Ford are mega $$$ to prevent people cobbling up their own kits.

If I still had Bruce I'd have a measure about for you though. In fact I'll have a peek at an XR8 I'm doing some work on at the end of this week.

A.

[project.r.racing]

Originally Posted by Aaron

Ryan, are you sure about this? Really really sure? Or are you just saying this is the case becuase you saw a 16v cast into a Ford caliper and have a 16v cast into the Astina caliper?

made a mistake, its 22V.

at the last motorkhana i went to, a few of the FPV falcons there had them on. my fronts look indentical to there stock rears.

and some of them had the brembo upgrade packages installed. so i'm assuming that the caliper should be/fit the same. but rotor offsets etc unsure about. i'm would think they wouldn't be right for a FWD astina. but you could always get DBA to make the right ones up.

like i said in 1st post, i haven't done the research yet, been trying to get another closer look at a BA/BH FPV vehicle to confirm this.

hope that helped. let us know about that XR8 please.

ryan

[boostedbatman]

Well with v6 hubs and calipers you can run 276mm (standard v6) rotors
The problem with this type of upgrade is that you will need a G series Gearbox with 28 spline CVs and not the 26 splines from an F series

[Rupewrecht]

Originally Posted by boostedbatman

Well with v6 hubs and calipers you can run 276mm (standard v6) rotors
The problem with this type of upgrade is that you will need a G series Gearbox with 28 spline CVs and not the 26 splines from an F series

Not true. Hub spline is the same for F and G

[Aaron]

Ryan, The BA Brakes are not going to work, they may have 22v on the caliper, but they're not the same style of 22v that we have. Had a quick check out in the carpark walking to stinky on a Premium equipped XR and a regular XR and they run the same rear calipers - just a different rotor, but same sized. The calipers are a closer design to the v6 design and may (or may not) interchange on the v6 knuckle.

As I said in my original post, a swap to run v6 knuckles and calipers with 4cyl hubs using post 01 MX-5 rotors is the only easy bolt up swap that lets you keep your investment in wheels.

Sadly there's no-one that I'm aware of that has yet just managed to bolt together options and come up with a cost effective solution. Certainly saying "have DBA make up some discs" is all good but honestly if you're looking at custom hats etc then you've already walked past the budget that most people are happy to spend.

There is a big brake kit conversion I've heard that uses stock knuckles and it gets around the knuckle clearance by running ~355mm rotors with a small 6 or 8 piston calipers, don't know about the caliper > wheel spacing and whether spacers were used though. That's always an option, but can you imagine how much those rotors would cost mounted onto nice alloy hats!!!

A.

[Cosmo Dude]

Originally Posted by boostedbatman

Well with v6 hubs and calipers you can run 276mm (standard v6) rotors
The problem with this type of upgrade is that you will need a G series Gearbox with 28 spline CVs and not the 26 splines from an F series

Originally Posted by Rupewrecht

Not true. Hub spline is the same for F and G

To my best efforts the V6 and I4 both use the same wheel bearing so using a V6 knuckle and I4 hub will only need a blank V6 rotor drilled to 4X100 PCD and you are back on the road with your fav rims still in place.

[project.r.racing]

Originally Posted by Cosmo Dude

To my best efforts the V6 and I4 both use the same wheel bearing so using a V6 knuckle and I4 hub will only need a blank V6 rotor drilled to 4X100 PCD and you are back on the road with your fav rims still in place.

yup tru, R0B-80E has done this conversion on his turbo BG.

ryan