sawood12
New member
Well I installed my recently purchased Big Black upgrade kit. I've never done anything more than replace discs and pads when it comes to brakes so was a bit intimidated by the whole draining the brake fluid and bleeding thing. However I made a sound £15 investment in a Gunson Ezibleed kit from Halfords which pressurises your brake lines from the spare wheel so you can bleed the brakes on your own and I must say it was the dogs cahoonas - it definately does what it says on the tin and it is a kit I would recommend. Other than that the job was surprisingly easy with the only pain in the backside thing being having to cut away the shroud that sits behind the disc. It looks a bit messy but my ultimate intension is to replace my steering knuckle and hubs from one off a 250 turbo if I can ever find a pair.
The kit consists of an adapter braket which seems to work very well. Although the bracket is made from Aluminium Alloy I gave the studs that bolt the caliper to it a very good tightening up without fear of stripping the threads. Iwas planning to wire lock the studs but the allen heads are sunk into the caliper so I used some locktight to ensure the studs wont go anywhere in a hurry. One of the most impressive things about the big blacks is the weight. I was a bit concerned about adding weight with the calipers being significatly larger and the discs are much bigger, but the calipers and the discs don't seem that much heavier than the standard setup at all, in fact I couldn't detect any noticable wieght increase in the calipers by my one-in-each hand weighing method so any real weight increase is fairly small. If I'd gone for the 2-piece disc option, which is lighter and was an extra $250 (ish), I reckon the overall weight increase is negligable.
There are only two things I am concerned with- one is that the Stainless Steel Braided lines I installed appear to be slightly twisted in order to get them attached to the caliper. I messed around for some time with the union to try to get the line to feel more relaxed but couldn't get all the twist out of it. I will have to keep an eye on this for signs of the braid wearing prematurely. In fact the line could do with being a bit shorter. It's exactly the same lenght as the rubber line I removed but it seams to snake aroung much more - braided lines don't like tight radiuses so that could be the reason why they feel stiffer. The only other thing i'm concerned with is that the caliper adapter seems to position the caliper at slightly too large a radius. I tried the adapter in every possible orientation but the pads slightly overlaps the rim of the disc by about 0.5mm. My ultimate intention is to get the 250 tubo hubs but I think in the meantime i'll get 0.75mm or so shaved off the adapters to pull the caliper in a bit.
Initial impressions of the on-road behavious is limited at the moment as i've not bedded in the pads but there is more pedal travel, which I was expecting, and the EBC yellows do seem to have better cold bite than the EBC reds I had installed before.
Anyway it's an easy mod for the average DIY mechanic to tackle and i'm looking forward to putting them through their paces on track. Just got the rear brakes to sort out now! I've attached the 'after' pic below.
The kit consists of an adapter braket which seems to work very well. Although the bracket is made from Aluminium Alloy I gave the studs that bolt the caliper to it a very good tightening up without fear of stripping the threads. Iwas planning to wire lock the studs but the allen heads are sunk into the caliper so I used some locktight to ensure the studs wont go anywhere in a hurry. One of the most impressive things about the big blacks is the weight. I was a bit concerned about adding weight with the calipers being significatly larger and the discs are much bigger, but the calipers and the discs don't seem that much heavier than the standard setup at all, in fact I couldn't detect any noticable wieght increase in the calipers by my one-in-each hand weighing method so any real weight increase is fairly small. If I'd gone for the 2-piece disc option, which is lighter and was an extra $250 (ish), I reckon the overall weight increase is negligable.
There are only two things I am concerned with- one is that the Stainless Steel Braided lines I installed appear to be slightly twisted in order to get them attached to the caliper. I messed around for some time with the union to try to get the line to feel more relaxed but couldn't get all the twist out of it. I will have to keep an eye on this for signs of the braid wearing prematurely. In fact the line could do with being a bit shorter. It's exactly the same lenght as the rubber line I removed but it seams to snake aroung much more - braided lines don't like tight radiuses so that could be the reason why they feel stiffer. The only other thing i'm concerned with is that the caliper adapter seems to position the caliper at slightly too large a radius. I tried the adapter in every possible orientation but the pads slightly overlaps the rim of the disc by about 0.5mm. My ultimate intention is to get the 250 tubo hubs but I think in the meantime i'll get 0.75mm or so shaved off the adapters to pull the caliper in a bit.
Initial impressions of the on-road behavious is limited at the moment as i've not bedded in the pads but there is more pedal travel, which I was expecting, and the EBC yellows do seem to have better cold bite than the EBC reds I had installed before.
Anyway it's an easy mod for the average DIY mechanic to tackle and i'm looking forward to putting them through their paces on track. Just got the rear brakes to sort out now! I've attached the 'after' pic below.