Well, after two weeks of my car being on jack stands, it finally has all four wheels back on the ground and a whole new look!

I picked up the calipers and drums on Friday afternoon. When I first saw them I started freaking out because they looked really dark. I stared in terror as I thought "I just paid $80.00 for something that's never going to match the color of the car!" I got them home and I put the drums on right away. The color looked fine until I put the rear wheels on. The drums looked way darker than the wheels. I continued freaking out about this all weekend until everything was finished today and matched (thank God).

Fast forward to this morning. I woke up at 4:30. I proceeded to wake my dad up so we could get an early start. By the time we got our coffee from a local gas station and started in on the new brakes, it was about 5:30. Everything went pretty smoothly until we began bleeding the system. Fortunately after only a couple hours of me sitting in the car pressing down on the brake pedal we finally got the system bled (I sure got a hell of a workout for my right calf ). We got the wheels back on and I proceeded to floor it up and down the driveway a couple times making sure the brakes were working properly. The car was stopping very nicely .

So, you may be asking yourself what exactly you are looking at in the below pictures, well here's your answer.

- Baer Racing drilled and slotted Decela rotors (Turbo Tech Racing)
- Power Stop extreme performance disc brake pads (Turbo Tech Racing)
- calipers and drums powder coated to match the color of the car (Powder Coat Chicago)

There are also some slightly less noticeable things. To keep everything looking as good as possible we used some gloss black VHT caliper and drum paint on the caliper spindles and the clamps on the outside facing brake pads.

Now, enough of my ramblings, on to the pictures.









To see more pictures of the new brakes with the wheels on, please click here.

To see pictures of the old crappy, rusty brakes, please click here.

Tomorrow I will be posting updated exterior pictures of the car with the new brakes and pictures of the rear strut bar installed. Be sure to check back for those .

All comments, questions, concerns etc. are welcome. Thanks for looking.

wow - big difference from the rusted stuff. Was it pretty easy???
Looks good. Keep up the good work - especailly love ur engine look too.

-Seth

looks sick

Nice job, Just for some info, You can find nice looking drums made by Brembo for about $60 each. Thats the way i went for the rear. And i have slotted rotors up front, and soon new calipers.

Nice, paint that @!#$ so it doesnt rust.



Official member - www.ontarioCAVS.com & J-Body Club of Ontario

Do you have any intention of upgrading your drums to either a performance set or disk brake swap?

Very nice.....Glad you went with a powder coat....Lasts a hell of a lot longer then rattle can.....Upgrading and painting brakes makes a big difference on a car....IMO....

looks good


id clean up and paint the centers of the rear hubs , where the drums do not sit

where the drums sit you need to keep bare metal , and id use anti-seize on that surface to keep the drum and the hub from rusting together

and same with the disks , id put a little anti sieze on the hab mating surface


i know you live in a salt road area , and do drive the , so it will help out if you ever need to do the brakes or pull the breaks for any reason

@ wizkiddrummer: Yes, definitely a huge difference over the rusted brakes. I almost cried when we got everything on because it looked so much better . I wouldn't say it was easy, but it also wasn't hard. The hardest and most time consuming part of the whole process was bleeding the brake system. In my opinion though the outcome was well worth the process. Thanks for the kind words on the car !

@ dirty elf: Thank you very much !

@ El Fuego (the unstable): Cool, thanks for the information. I had been planning all along to get the calipers and drums powder coated the same color as the car. It was $80.00 for the powder coating ($25.00 per caliper & $15.00 per drum) so I guess, at least in my case, that it was a better deal to just get the drums powder coated since the ones from Brembo are $60.00 a piece. Just my two cents though . Do you have any pictures of the Brembo drums on your car? Thanks for the kind words on the car !

@ STYLEZ24: Thanks! paint what? I'm confused .

@ El Fuego: A rear disc conversion would be nice someday, but for now I am happy to just have nice looking brakes. I will be doing those bigger mods later on once everything else is done.

@ Joe (Modified-MotorSports): Thank you very much ! I am definitely glad I went with powder coating too. It was well worth $80.00 to know that I won't ever have to worry about them fading, chipping, cracking, etc. I couldn't agree more about what a huge difference upgrading the brakes made.

@ 97cavie24ls(JDM&00s/c sedans™): Thanks a lot Eric ! You'll have to explain to me in a little more detail about the anti-seize, etc. so I can do that, even though the car doesn't really get driven in the winter .

I am going out to the garage to install the rear strut bar and get some pictures of it. Once that's done, I am going to take the car for a little ride. Hopefully I can find a nice area to take some exterior shots. I'll post some more pictures later today.