How-to: Cheap brake upgrade

[Mr Whippy]

Having done the conversion I can say it's night and day between them. Also remember that BMW thought it worth the upgrade from the 3.0SE to the 3.0Si

If you are at the point hat you need new discs and pads then it's a conversion that can be done for £100 so has to be worth it.

I have a 16" spare and it fits the rears that are IIRC 294mm but not the 325mm front. I'll need a 17", except that 90% of flats are on the rear anyway.

I need new discs and pads ideally all round soon.

So £100 for the calipers and carriers.

How much more are 'normal' consumeables for the larger setup?

Not really too fussed, I think the brakes as they are on mine are good despite being past their best, but if you are saying night/day (on otherwise good 300mm vs 325mm) then I guess they might be worth a look...

Dave

[cj10jeeper]

I shelled out around £400 for EBS Ultima grooved discs and EBC Greenstuff pads. I wanted to change anyway as the discs were original 2003 and covered nearly 40k

I'm sure the discs themselves make little if any difference over OEM, but for the money I wanted a bit of 'through the wheel look' with the open 108's and them being 18". Greenstuff pads again probably only the same as OEM, but low dust.

The big difference has to come from the combination of much bigger calipers and pads that come from the E46 and the effective increase in braking leverage, by placing them further from the rotational centre.

[RichardG]

It's just set me back a little over £400 for the EBC Ultimax Sport Slotted discs and EBC Greenstuff pads, in puny 284mm Vented fronts and Solid rears, the thing that has struck me is in reality just how primitive the calipers are, I'm big into motorbikes and the last time I had single piston floating calipers was 25 years ago on a Kawasaki GPZ600R, even budget bikes these days have multi piston calipers and the latest superbikes are fitted radial calipers with up to 6 pistons.

IMO it's about time the car industry caught up, especialy the so called premium brands of which BMW is , how many people on this forum are changing brake pads and finding only the Piston side is worn because the calipers have effectively siezed.

Rant Over.

[Mr Whippy]

Probably cost.

To be honest sliders do the job fine for most road cars, and are easier to maintain.

De-siezing calipers shouldn't be needed if the people fitting the consumeables cleans them well and services them at that stage.

Dave

[mmm-five]

Here's the cheapest brake upgrade I could find - saves you painting them too

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll? ... 0359978932

[z4monkey]

hi guys looking for advice,


how did the rear vented 320mm upgrade go?

at present have 370x35mm billet movit on the front, which are down right great, but still standard on the rear(solid 294mm) and was looking for cheap upgrade to help with brake balance.

I have the complete OEM front set up if that could be used in any way.

[Mr Whippy]

What model car do you have?

I'm surprised your rear ones are solid and not vented!

Also, remember with improved decelleration you reduce rear wheel load anyway, so the need for bigger brakes might not be so important... if they are solids I'd certainly upgrade to the OEM vented ones at least though...

Fronts won't work easily, you'd need to use a new handbrake system at least, which is alot of hassle.

[mmm-five]

Don't forget that upgrading the front too much without a proportionate upgrade to the rear can result in some 'interesting' handling when braking hard

[z4monkey]

sorry, rears are vented my mistake!,

handling, while hitting the brakes is very good but not perfect, even with weight transfer there is no lockup or skipping, just alittle light at the rear rear which is to be expected,

my zed silver lhd 3.0 smg, but a few subtle extras , including asa sc, bilstens, brakes and dark bbs, it surprises the M guys .

[Mr Whippy]

Sounds like a nice spec car

Pics

I'd probably try the 330Ci rears then, are they not a touch bigger!?

Dave

[cj10jeeper]

Just a little footnote to this conversion...

After fitting non RFT's I decided a skinny spare would be a good idea, so went with an E46 16" that I sourced locally for a few £'s

Alas and no surprise it no longer fits the front since the larger rotors were later fitted (and on a 108 set up you can't put the rear on the front either), so I've swapped through Ebay to a 17" E46 330 version.

and here we are test fitted, as I didn't fancy trying if it really works when you have a flat....

[tomTVR]

Bit of a bump.

Looking at doing this myself. I have reserved a full set of callipers/carriers from a 330d touring to fit to my 3.0i.

Will these callipers fit straight on? (aside from protection plate issue) Also (perhaps a silly question) but do I buy new 330d discs and fit those to the Z4 as usual? I noticed when looking for discs the 330d disc 'thread size' was 14.5mm as opposed to 14.7mm on the standard Z4 disc.

Many thanks.

[cj10jeeper]

tomTVR
All you need is the carriers and calipers. The protection plate is fine (assuming you have a 3.0)
You just need the 330 larger rotors and pads.
I'm not familiar with disc thread size?

[tomTVR]

Hi CJ, thank you for the reply

Disc thread size was something listed in the detailed dimensions for the discs at eurocarparts, im sure .2mm shouldn't be a problem.

Won't be fitting these until later in the year, (i just wanted to confirm that 330 discs would fit straight on) but will post an update

[Mr Whippy]

I'm also semi-tempted... deffo fronts to 325mm, but not sure if there is much point for the rears if the 3.0Si essentially comes with the same config (E46 330Ci probably has the bigger rears for the possible high loads (boot and passengers)) and also the rears need the back plates swapping (iirc from the first post)

I really like the look of drilled discs too, but just not sure. The only ones I can find are Brembo and about £350 for the pair!!! Flip!

Maybe drilling some solids DIY will be the best bet

Dave