On a more positive note, my go-to auto shop has three locations. One downtown about 5 miles west, one in the suburbs about 5 miles east, and a new one about 20 miles southeast of here. I've been meaning to check out the new one, because it's more focused on being a speed shop, whereas the other two get their fill of maintenance and repair work.

So I drove out there today, talked to them about the brake swap. Checked out the facility. Feel pretty good about it.

In a perfect series of events, I'll be getting the calipers back this Thursday. I'll reassemble them over the weekend, apply decals and clear coat over the decals, then call for an appointment. Best case scenario is for an install next week, worse case the week after.

I'm going to leave my duckfeet and snows on the car for the brake swap. No point in having the Vossens on the car for this work.

 

Have you looked into running fancy brake fluid or are you just going OEM spec? You don't track the car so I wouldn't expect you to need to worry about it, but you do love to over research things.

 

OEM spec. DOT3, I believe, in whatever brand the shop uses.

 

I'd personally use better fluid. Recall Car and Driver wrecked a Nismo 370 due to brake failure, and recommended at the least, better pads and fluid.

I'm a fan of Motul RBF600 for a reasonable priced widely available alternative.

 

I just got an invoice from the Powder Coater. Apparently the project didn't require three pounds of powder, they bought six pounds. And the premium color I selected is $40 per pound between the base coat and the top coat.

Ouch. It still cost less than the other two shops I was considering, but $538 total cost isn't chump change. I was expecting this to come in around $400. If I were to hazard a guess, they bought a 4th pound to mitigate the margin of error, but the clean-up took more effort than they estimated (without seeing the calipers first), so they stockpiled a couple of pounds to make up for it. IDK... it's all conjecture. And it doesn't matter the reasoning, because it is what it is.

Hope it looks amazing. Pretty nervous about it. I'm going to go pick them up now.


[edit]

OMG, they're fcking beautiful.

 

After studying the caliper halves, I'm still going to have to clean the surfaces where the two halves bolt together, and clean out the piston chambers. They're all a little rough to the touch, but clean up smooth. I think the laser blasting leaves some dust behind that adhered hot to the metal, and then got masked for painting. But like I said, they clean up smooth.

There are a couple of pieces where the color isn't 100% uniform, however this 2-stage orange changes appearance so much depending on the lighting angle and intensity, that any color shift gets swallowed up in the overall look. And there are some edges where the paint and/or clear coat could be smoothed down. I'm going to work on these pieces over the coming days, eventually rebuilding them and bolting them together.

But overall... wow, these are gorgeous. Simply gorgeous. Here's a shot of all the pieces:



...and here's a macro shot that shows off the color.

 

Colour looks great, they'll look fantastic installed with your summer wheels back on the car.

 

The larger hex nut on the new bleeder valves makes it more difficult to tighten and loosen the bleeder on the caliper. I can only get a 1/4 turn at a time with the wrench. I'll have to point that out to the shop for the install, and ask that they take care not to chip the paint when messing with the front-facing valves.

The two larger decals went on perfectly, however the two smaller ones... while centered left-right, I applied them not so center top-bottom, maybe 1/8" off. (sigh) I was thrown off because when cutting the decal out of the single sheet, I left too much space on the bottom side. Once done I can't undo it, but they're really small, and the only one who will ever notice is me. Seriously, it's not a big deal. On a positive note, the black decals look fantastic against the orange.

Next up is to figure out a reasonable means to clear-coat the decals. After that, pistons, seals & dust boots. And then reassembly (60 lb-ft on the wrench).

So these two things happened this morning.








​​​​​​​

 

Excellent progress and the color definitely pops. Can only imagine how they look in person, in sunlight. Waiting patiently for the final result.

(Darn you Rochester... now you got me wanting to consider them on my Zed/4- that orange looks spot on to what I have).

 

These new bleeders... the shank is slightly shorter by a thread or two, so in order to crank them down into the tapered seat inside the caliper, you have to crush the bleeder seal. And that just looks stupid. The rubber bulges like a bull frog. So because of this, and the truly awkward hex size, I'm going to ditch them and reuse the originals. They fit 100% correctly, and they can be manhandled with a wrench like normal.

And that would be $60 completely, totally wasted. Thanks for nothing, Z1 Motorsports.

[edit]

I wrote to Z1 to describe how their "Akebono Speed Bleeders" are problematic because of the hex size and the shank length. They ignored me.

 

This morning I'm experimenting with rebuilding the calipers, starting with the backside of one of the rears.

The new seal goes in just fine. And the piston pushes in with some (significant) effort, with the dust boot on the piston seated in its groove at the edge of the piston. After pushed all the way in, I can push the dust boot into the groove at the top of the cylinder wall. All is good so far, right?

However, I can't seem to get the dust boot retainer ring inserted properly. It looks like a good portion of the retainer ring is seated correctly, and a good portion isn't, like it's fighting with the dust boot rubber. Does anyone know what I'm talking about, and have any tips & tricks for advice?

I'm feeling like I can't see what I'm looking at, and need a magnifying glass. Damn old eyes.

[edit]

You know what? Never mind. I kept popping the piston out and studying the situation. What I discovered is that the retainer rings are all the identical size, but for the smaller cylinders (which are 8 of the 12), that's a little too big. If I clip a 1/4" off the retainer ring, and grind down the rough ends, then I can install them much, much easier. Also, the dust boot and the ring needed to be greased more thoroughly. But more important is I just needed to get better at this, and I think I have. All four back pieces are rebuilt now, and I feel confident about them. Still need to do the front pieces.

And I clear-coated two of the front pieces today. So... progress, one day at a time.

 

Saturday... I'm clear coating the last two outward facing caliper haves. My approach here was to only expose the flat, rectangular section where the decal is, and mask everything else. Seems to be working out well.

I'm waiting until tomorrow for the clear coat to dry solid, before continuing to work on those two. Meanwhile, 9 of the 12 cylinders have been rebuilt, and two whole calipers are reassembled. 60 ft-lb... uggah uggah.

Two down, two to go. I'm on track to making a call to the shop on Monday for an appointment to do the swap.

 

It's been a little over a month since this project started, and I'm looking at the end game now.

All four calipers are rebuilt and reassembled. New seals, dust boots, retainer rings, bleeder seals and bleeder caps, decals applied with a strategic clear coat over them. Everything is clean as a whistle, and after a while I got pretty darn proficient in rebuilding the cylinders, so I'm feeling confident. I tested every piston with careful application of air pressure to make sure they were all firm but functional. And the huge bolts in back are torqued down properly.

Here they are down in my basement, with the SS lines, ready the be bagged and boxed for the install.

 

The important thing is that they're *both* off by 1/8... so it will look purposeful.

I did the same thing with the clear - just masked off the rectangular surface and sprayed that.

 

I was going to shoot for this week to install, but the weather is going to be near freezing with likelihood for rain and/or snow, so I scheduled the install for next Tuesday morning, April 9. The forecast looks like that will be our first solid week of Spring. Meanwhile, the calipers are bagged and out of the way, and I'll try and put this out of my head for the next week. (LOL, good luck with that.)

I won't really consider this project done until I put my Vossens back on the car. And then I'll be selling my old calipers. If you browse for Akebono brakes on ebay, it seems the typical ask is over $500 plus shipping for junkyard pieces that are filthy and even damaged. Mine aren't that at all, so I'll probably create a FS thread here at $500 shipped.