The Project Pad

It is nice to have a working handbrake on my Coupe again. Brake upgrades are complete on my eS2 project. At least until I need new rotors

Nice, Chris. I have the same setup I got from John B. I just have not gotten around to doing an install. I may be emailing you down the road for some advice about the e-brake cable install.

Did you take off your hubs to drill and tap the splash shield bolts to hold the adapter? Is that the B6 S4 rotor, 300X22?

Greg W.

Hmm don' know what happened.

Looks good!

please give us some details how much work involved, or the total cost.
Im doing a brake upgrade for someone, and since i love simplicity, im thinking about this caliper:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/381316396763?_t ... EBIDX%3AIT

varia wrote:Looks good!

please give us some details how much work involved, or the total cost.
Im doing a brake upgrade for someone, and since i love simplicity, im thinking about this caliper:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/381316396763?_t ... EBIDX%3AIT

Thanks Chris!
Nice choice for a caliper. Working on a how-to writeup now.

I figured I had to pull the hubs. I have an extra set of 14mm hub carriers I got from a late Euro coupe, so I will drill and tap those. Any info on the brake cables would be good. That part of John's write up could have been a little more explanatory.

Did you use B4 sedan cables? These are the same as the B4 avant ones that John used for the extra length.

Greg W.

90quattrocoupe wrote:I figured I had to pull the hubs. I have an extra set of 14mm hub carriers I got from a late Euro coupe, so I will drill and tap those. Any info on the brake cables would be good. That part of John's write up could have been a little more explanatory.

Did you use B4 sedan cables? These are the same as the B4 avant ones that John used for the extra length.

Greg W.

I'm having trouble with my pictures integrating in to a post. It is how they formatted when moved over from my smarter than me phone.To answer your question Greg, yes B4 sedan cables. I totally agree about John's cable mods information & made a few mistakes that with now obtained knowledge I can help others avoid. In his defense, he did say that they were done by someone else.
Chris

First off, credit where credit is due. I began this upgrade by thoroughly reading this thread on the
S2 Forum.
http://www.s2forum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=62766
This gives a how to & parts list that I replicated.
Secondly, I do not want to make another set of these brackets. It took me way too much time with the tools I had to work with.
I have S2 hubs front & rear installed when I did the 5-bolt hub swap. The A4 hubs commonly used on the rear "should" work without any issue.
Found the Viper handbrake calipers from a salvage yard listing on e-bay & sourced new e-brake cables thru Amazon that came from Shokan. Acceptable pricing for the Viper calipers, the cost of the calipers was still as much as I paid for the Boxster S brake calipers. Hardware, calipers, cables, steel plate for the brackets amounted to under $700. The heart wants what the heart wants.
I tried to source the brackets from Bambridge but I ended up making my own.
Started with a piece of Poplar wood to make my initial design. Easy to work with & cheap enough to try different designs. Moved to 1/8" steel plate for a pattern & then on to 1/2" plate for the final bracket. Maybe 3/8" would have been enough but I wanted to have at least 6 full threads on the 10X1.25mm bolts that held the calipers to the brackets & the thread depth should be at least the diameter of the fastener.
I torched the rough design out of 1/2" plate steel as I do not have a plasma cutter. I used a Harbor Freight bench top drill press for my "machining" work & an electric grinder for my finishing operations.
My first attempt placed the caliper too close to the hub carrier arm.

On to the cables.I want to clarify first that the brake cables ends will be referred to as the caliper end (CE) & the hand brake adjuster end (HB). Also, there are the parts of the hand brake cable that makes up the hand brake cable assembly. We will call them in order, firstly, the outer covering with the metal spiral wrap. The spiral wrap covers the inner sheath with Ferrule on the CE end of the hand brake cable. The inner sheath covers the plastic covered cable that imparts motion from the hand brake lever to the brake caliper arm. The write up by John B left me with questions about the brake cable modifications. (You did read it thoroughly, Right?) He mentions to remove the extra length from the caliper end of the cable. I believe that the hand brake adjuster end will be the better choice. There is a metal Ferrel on the CE that holds the inner sheath in place. As you remove the 100mm of outer cable sheathing from the CE you risk the chance of melting the inner sheath as well as needing to move the Ferrule. After removing 100mm of length from the outer cable sheath you are faced with how do you get it off. I used an air powered cut off wheel but had to be careful to not melt the plastic inner sheath that the inner cable rides in. If you do melt it then you will need to transfer the Ferrule on to the newly cut part of the inner sheath. No fun. If you work from the HB end then you can let the inner sheath protect the inner cable when you cut the 100mm section out. I used a heat gun to heat up the metal end of the CE off the cable body while twisting off metal end with a pair of pliers.

Working on the HB end of the cable.


Back to the CE end of cable.

Right, continuing on. The bracket that secures the forward end of the hand brake cable will need to be enlarged for the B4 cable to fit the B3 chassis. The B4 cable end is slightly larger than the B3 cable bracket. You can reuse your old cable clips from the B3 cables if they are not rusted away as mine were.

Almost done.
And there you go. Questions? Comments? Criticisms?
Chris