So the plan today is to head down to the garage, remove the old brake callipers and test fit the new Tiger branded, 4 pot, fixed brake callipers. I’ve read the instructions a number of times and I have to be honest they don’t make much sense to me! I suspect I’ll be able to figure it out with the car in front of me.
Here’s what is getting fitted:
There’s a couple of things making me a little nervous. First, these are fixed brake callipers and therefore there is no calliper guide pin and they need to be mounted centrally to the disc. I don’t have the tools for measure this properly. Second, the instructions talk about “removing some metal and pad” to make the pad fit. I don’t have an angle grinder! I do have a file but this won’t be practical unless it is a very small amount of material.
Other than that I think it should be quite straight forward. Remove the old disc and attach the new. Then, using the mounting plate, attach the new callipers to the calliper bracket. I can change the alignment relative to the disc by using the washers (all the hardware is provided by Tiger). Once this is mocked up I’ll add the brake pads.
The brake pads are EPC green stuff. I’ll be interested to feel the different in performance. I was initially tempted to buy EPC yellow stuff but the feedback on the forums is that green stuff is plenty sufficient and yellow is probably a step too far with such a light car.
I don’t plan on fully removing the old callipers today. I’ll try and cable tie them out of the way somewhere as I don’t want to remove the brake line yet. I’m leaving that until next weekend. A couple of reasons for this. First, I’m not sure what type of brake fluid is in the car at the moment. I’m going to pull a drop out of the reservoir and see if it is miscible with water (DOT 3, 4 and 5.1 are miscible and DOT 5 isn’t). Secondly, I am a Warden at a Hall of Residence and I’m on call this weekend. I don’t want to get called out to help a student when I’m in the middle of any activity involving fluids! Most call outs come in the evening or night time but better safe than sorry!
Once I’ve test fit the new parts I’m going to strip the whole lot back down again and remove the calliper bracket too. I don’t yet have the silicone based grease (it’s on its way) to use as an antiseize between the disc and hub and between the disc and wheel so I can’t do the final fit. It took me forever and a day to research what I should be using here. I don’t want any rust welding going on. It seems most UK mechanics go with copper grease. I’ve decided to go with a silicone-based high heat grease (Permatex 24129 Silicone Extreme Brake Parts Lubricant).
The current paint on the calliper bracket is as bad as the paint on the calliper:
I’m going to take it all back down to bare metal and spray with a heat resistance matt black paint. I’m going to paint the mounting/conversion plate supplied by Tiger too. I should be able to get that done today.
I’m planning to make a bit of a project out of reconditioning the old callipers. I’m interested to see how it all works and I suspect there is some value in them. They are either Golf Mk1 Gti or Golf Mk 2. Whichever, these parts are not that easy to get hold of.
Tim’s Tiger blog 