front brake callipers,

edmond

Member
i have just today swapped the front 3 pot calipers to four pot from a defender circa 1995 . am i a bad person?
The old calipers had been drilled out roughly at the brake nipple and a bolt had replaced the nipple plus they were seized solid at the pistons due to being stood since 2010.
They are a tight fit on the 14 inch wheels but dont catch so thats a good thing . also the copper brake pipe had to have a 90 degree bend almost immediately after it exits the caliper because the hole is on the side not on top. but it misses the bottom arm when the suspension is moved up or down, another good thing.
have tried and tested them with violent turns and braking and can report a success . hope to eventually replace these with oem brakes but being on a very low budget at least it is driveable.
I also put new pads in the rear calipers ,took about 3 to 4 hours as i undid the driveshafts and had the discs out to sand the high points of rust off. so therefore i did not need the silly piston wind back tool.
Oh in the front caliper i managed to snap a fixing bolt so i had to drill out the old bolt to within a millimeter of the threads and removed the remaining tube by using a joiners spade bit with a sharp point. then had to search the box of doom, must be a thousand old and new bolts collected over several car renovations, for a bolt with the correct thread , lo and behold i found one an inch too long so after first screwing a nut on past the cutting point which would clean and cut the correct thread at the end when removed. i cut it with my battery grinder with a slitting disc .eat your heart out Ed China with your top tips.
next job is the fuel tank sender .(the gauge is ok as when i joined the two wires at the tank connection the needle moved straight up to full. another top tip , please send your donations to the ian edmond benevolent fund.
 
Four pots that fit straight on? Do they work better?

Sounds interesting, got any pictures.
 
its a 2200tc on the irish log book but has a 2oo tc engine from a lhd , forgot to mention i had to bend back the backplate about an inch either end,am a bit tech phobic but eill put some pics on this week, its bad to tell if they are any better but they work a treat. oh another top tip i bled them overnight with a tube higher than the fluid reservoir then i didnt need to press the pedal at all.
 
Those pistons look to be out a long way. I bet those calipers were used on a vented disc. You might want to work out how far the pistons are out when the pad is worn out, they might be out too far.
 
Hi, Those look like non vented calipers, look at the gap for the disc. Vented calipers have a spacer between the two halves of the caliper to accommodate the thicker vented disc.

Colin
 
I would say the caliper is designed for thicker discs , be they solid or vented, as normally with new pads the pistons are right back in the caliper. Looking at Rimmers web site , and my own knowledge working for Land Rover, none of the calipers for either solid or vented discs have spacers
 
I see the gap at the bottom now. Perhaps the dust boots have been omitted ? They do look odd to me.
 
excellent observational skills chaps. i have had another look today cos the new pads turned up it would seem the defender disc is 2.5 mm thicker hence the larger space on the outside pad . there is about 4 mm gap whenthe outer pad is tight to the disc. so i have made a spacer to fill the gap , i dont think this is wrong because lots of pads have anti squeal shims. the pistons are 34 mm long so no chance of them getting near the end of allowed travel. the calipers were sourced because of my VERY limited budget as i am disabled on universal credit.
 
correct about the dust boots being missing . an issue i hope to cure before using the car on the road , which may be a couple of months cos of delays at dvla registering an import
 
They do look well fitted in place of the OE calipers. They do have a larger piston area, (about 35% ish from my rough calcs), so there will be more pedal travel with the standard m/cyl, but increasing the diameter of that shouldn't be a problem to bring that back to normal. It would be interesting to know if there is a matching increase in pad surface area.
 
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