i am doing z32 & cobra

ok first thing im curious about is that why did nissan only use a bolt to hold the caliper to the knuckle & not a nut to go along with it on the other side to secure. isnt this necessary ? i ordered extra bolts for the 300zx from the dealership and im running into problems. ill explain with the pictures what my main problem is !



ok in this picture, i used the OEM nissan bolts and purchased my own nuts to mount the bracket to the knuckle. the NEW bolts i bought from dealership for the 300zx are the ones holding the caliper and bracket together. in this picture they are not turned all the way.



ok here is where i need the most help.

1) the caliper is almost touching the rotor on the inside. is this safe?
2) since there is virtually no space between caliper and rotor then there is no way i can put a nut to lock this mechanism, therefore only a bolt will be used. is this safe? (i am assuming so since it came from nissan like that too)
3) in the picture, the bolts arent turned fully. if i turn them fully the bolts make contact with the rotor and push them out. infact i didnt notice this untill the bolt made a nice hole inside the rotor and left a groove
i am assuming i have to use nuts and washers to avoid the bolt from making contact with the rotor.
4) it seems like the rotor isnt centered. there is more room on the right for the pad than on the left. how do i go about fixing this issue? are the pads suppose to be slightly touching the rotor or not touchig at all ??





LAST BUT NOT LEAST. the ****in PIECE OF **** rubs !!!!!!! i am shocked to see that people with 17" clear and i am having problems with 19's. the spokes completly shaved off the paint from the NISSAN letter right down to the metal (so much for trying to get that part painted). im assuming 5mm spacers would fix this.

i know h&r sells good spacers for an arm and a neck but what are the cons of something like this :
http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/PAIR-...mZ290124044330

its only 5mm so i doubt ill need new studs.


this better be worth it cuz besides the above, i been through hell.

 

Where did you source these brackets? I was under the impression that the Cobra rotors had a slightly different offset than the Nissan rotor. This offset should have been compensated by the adapter bracket. Using a bolt only to secure the caliper and bracket is fine, if the hole in the bracket is threaded. Some adapter brackets I have seen have the holes helicoil threaded to accept a bolt thread. That way, using a nut is unnecessary.

 

these are the brackets sold by jeff. they are not threaded on the inside.

 

1. you use a bolt/nut to bolt the brackets to the knuckle.
2. the calipers are threaded for a reason. take a look at the stock calipers you removed. they're the same way. the Z32 calipers have a threaded steel insert on them (as shown in your picture, but you can tell cause they're painted red).
it's just fine to install them like that.

3. If the bolts are too long and are rubbing against the rotor, then pull the bolts out and grind the ends down a couple mm until they clear. make sure not to fubar the threads.

4. if the rotor isn't perfectly centered in the caliper and you want to mess with it, get some thin washers (stainless steel washers are usually thinner than zinc plated and will work just fine) and stack between the caliper and bracket or bracket and knuckle to move the bracket inward a bit in relation to the rotor.

5. FOR THE 15,000,000TH TIME, WHEEL SIZE AND OFFSET HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH HOW THE CALIPERS CLEAR THE SPOKES. CALIPER CLEARANCE IS COMPLETELY DEPENDENT ON THE WHEEL SPOKE DESIGN.

 

Everything seems about right. I am assuming your using hubcentric rings correct? The caliper holes do run extremely close to the rotor. Also the bolts will stick out to the other side no questions asked. You must use washers to prevent this from happening. I think I used 3 washers for each one for the caliper. Here some pictures I snapped when I did mine as you can see.



I would have to say that the pads will not be perfectly centered. Well mine arent and well there just go way to center them.



Also you mention that they are rubbing your wheels. It seems as if you need to grind down the Nissan just a bit. Either that or get spacers. Well hope that helps you get somewhat in the right direction.

 

thanks for the help matt. my problem is that inorder to center the rotor in the caliper, i need to move the caliper away from the rotor (or the wheel) and more towards the engine. this is pretty hard

 

holly $hit. i think i forgot to slap on the centering rings. are they designed to push the rotor out a bit? if so, my rotors will be centered !!!!!!!!!

as far as the rims hitting the calipers. they arent even fully in contact with the NISSAN letters. as seen in the picture, they are grinding on the bottom 2mm of the NISSAN letters. not even the full thing, just the base of the letters. my luck always.


anyone can tell me the cons of using cheap ebay spacers as linked above? i honestly cant think of any.

 

Well if that's the case, then it would appear that the bracket you are using is slightly too thick for this application. You're right, correcting this would be a little difficult, requiring the bracket to machined down a little bit.

As for the Ebay spacers, they will work fine as long as you don't exceed 4-5mm or so. Any more than this and you will lose the hub centering benefit for your wheels.

 

The caliper won't be perfectly centered. But I've never had any problems and most don't. I've mentioned that you have to be careful about how long of bolt you use for the caliper to bracket. Since the bracket isn't as thick as the torque member you have to take care not to put it too far or else it will hit the rotor. Either buy the right sized bolts or use washers. But if you have to use more than a few washers buy new bolts. I think Karim's thread addresses most of this very well? Edit. Yeah those are way too big, buy ones that are close and use a washer. You should be using a lock washer anyway.

Rings center the rotor onto the hub.

Caliper clearance is all about spoke design. It's been discussed many, many times. It's why we have a thread about this very thing to help guys get an idea about what fits/what doesn't.

Rubbing the wheels, If it's THAT close, then I'd rather grind down the "nissan" lettering. There's about 1.5 mm that you can grind for clearance.

 

well i centered the caliper no problems but i used 3 flat washers and 2 lock washers inorder to lock the bolts in (for each bolt). i think thats abit extreme. i might need to buy shorter bolts. these are the ones from nissan and the ones karim mentioned are the wrong size, way too thick and wrong thread size

 

they're not the wrong thread size if they threaded into the calipers.

if they're too long and they have enough thread on them, simply cut the end off the bolt to make it a hair shorter. DO NOT use that many washers. asking for trouble. use one flat washer and one lock washer per bolt, that's it. any more than that, and the washers can rotate against each other, allowing the bolt to back out and completely negating the reason the lockwasher is there.

and umm yeah, you're scrood if you want to move the caliper in closer to the car. I didn't look close at the bracket to see that it's all stacked. my brackets fit on the inboard side of the knuckle, so you can stack a washer on either side of the bracket to move it in or out.

 

we are not talking about a hair here. its .25" and cutting them is not an option.



the bolt from nissan is the one on the left. if i cut .25" off that one, then there is virtually no thread left on the bolt, that aisde since, if i cut the bolt and place it through the bracket, as soon as the bolt reaches the caliper it will get stuck cuz of the unthreaded section that wont screw into the caliper. so prolly the caliper will have 1/8 of an inch worth of bolt in it making this option impossible. the bolts mentioned by karim are 12x1.75, the bolts used by nissan are 12x1.25 you guys prolly think "oh big deal just get a bolt" but let me tell you, finding a bolt in metric system (as used by nissan), is next to impossible. the one on the right is the one i just bought and its still too long. aside from that since its threaded all the way, the bracket will have a lot of play in it. the OEM bolt was thicker in the unthreaded section and held the bracket in place TIGHT. thanks for all the advice so far projects like this always have alot of twist in them. just takes paitence and time. did i mention, i stripped the nut to the OEM brake fuild line (wish me luck on that one !)

back to work for me !

 

A fastener supply place like Tacoma Screw will have every type of thread and strength grade you will need. Places like Home Depot don't cut it.

 

yes about 6 hours of looking like a fool in home depot, osh and low's thought me this lesson !

 

any auto parts store should have those bolts. 12mm x 1.25mm is a normal fine thread bolt, same thread pitch as your wheel studs and many other suspension bolts on import cars. honda usually uses coarse threads, but almost all of toyotas' bolts are fine thread as well. Thus, you should be able to find some between Nissan, Toyota, and the parts store.

either way, this isn't that big of a deal. use the bolt on the right and trim the end off if its still too long.

 

thanks, everything is bolted ready to go except the nut holding the OEM brake lines likes to strip instead of open loose.

i just had 1 last question. are the pads suppose to be in contact with the rotors at this point? because they are fully in contact with the rotor at the moment even tho the pistons are pushed back all the way.

as soon as i find a way to loosen the nuts, this baby will be ready to fire up.

 

Unless you have a brake line wrench, it's difficult to loosen those soft line nuts. I just use a vice grip and carefully turn them. Usually works better.

 

hmm im afraid vice grips might strip it even further. i have a brake line wrench however the nut appears to be 13.5mm cuz 13 was small and 14 was big

 

Actually if you catch the flats of the bolt, vice grips seem to prevent damage. But as with everything, be careful.

As for the pads touching, I don't remember touching when I did my initial install. Insert them and see if they bind. THAT might create problem. If they are just very close but the pads slide in easy, then I don't see a problem

 

i put the pads in and turned the rotor, rotor turns easily but you can clearly hear the pads rubbing against the rotor. also the rotor doesnt rub in some areas suggesting that its not sitting straight ! i used the lug nuts to push the rotor all the way to the back and it still doesnt sit straight.

car is gonna remain on jacks till spacers arrive, then i WILL tow it to a shop to take those oem brake lines off & finish the rest. i give up

 

FINISHED. SWAP COMPLETE ! (maximabebe u thought YOU had a hard time haha)

i got the SS lines on. new pads rotors and ss lines for front and back, car is done. just gotaa wait a few days for spacers. max is gonna be out of comission a few days.

i cant quiet get the rotors to sit straight on the hub since the ring avoids full rotor contact with the hub. what should i do ?

thanks to all who made this possible (jeff and matt for rings and brackets).

cant wait to bed them in !

 

My ride was out of commish for 11 days total, but well worth it. My front Z32 brakes grab harder than Jenna Jameson's mouth. Ok, sorry, I'm half in the bag right about now.....it was poker night.

 

lol. how do i make the rotors sit straight. they sit a bit crooked and 2mm away from hub, the ring doesnt quiet sit flat agains the hub, rather 2mm away from hub.

 

Take the rotor completely off of the car. Sit them faced down on a hard flat surface (garage floor, thick board of wood...). Anyways, what you want to do is make sure the back of the rotor's face is absolutely flush with the ring.
This took me a little bit of troubleshooting time but it was well worth it. I noticed that one side of the hubcentric ring was sitting a touch higher than the other side. I removed the ring and, using gloves and vice grips, I took the backside of the ring to a metal grinder wheel, shaving away the side that was sitting higher. There is no harm in removing any part of the back portion of the ring because the part that actually serves the purpose of the ring is the inner race which aligns the rotor onto the stock hub. I just kept grinding away carefully until the ring actually sit "in" the rotor's opening and was either completely flush or sitting slightly below the rotor's face. Using this method, it's a guarantee that the rotor will sit 100% perpendicular to the hub without interference.

 

Have you made 100% sure that your hub is really clean? ie.. no rust, scale, dirt etc??? You need to seriously clean the hub from all the usual junk, then retry to fit

 

i will try to do that. the back of the ring is flush with the rotor, its just that the diamater of the ring is a tad bit too small preventing it to go all the way back. i also painted the ring with 1 layer of paint to protect against rust, maybe ill take that off and try again.

 

Maybe try to sand the inner diameter of the ring a touch? Can you tap it all the way back carefully with a hammer/flathead combo?
+1 on cleaning the hub thoroughly. I used a wire brush in conjunction with a wire wheel bit on my drill.

 

lol, I'm sure your condo association is gonna love the car up on stands in the parking garage

 

I think yout rotor is on the wrong way...............

 

i dont think so, arent the vents suppose to bend back? kinda like this /
towards rear


i hate that **** man. i have so much limited space to try to do anything. i get jeleous when i see people with big a$$ backyards who have 5 VQ's laying around and doing all sorts of swaps. anytime i do anything, i have to answer 50 questions as the neighbors come in and out. "what are you doing?" "whats wrong with your car" blah blah for a simple oil change i have to make sure both my neighbors parking besides me are gone, then i have to run and do a quick change !

 

it doesnt really matter which directions the vents go, users choice, i like it the way he has it

 

http://www.apracing.com/roadcar/brak...tification.htm

Depending on whether or not the cooling vanes are curved...

 

trust me, I hear you. I have to work out in the street in front of my townhouse.

Just put an offer on a house with 2car garage though...so hopefully that will be a thing of the past

 

btw yes, they are on backwards. the slots on the outside don't matter, but the veins in the rotors should be going the other way...

I made the same mistake with mine...dont' feel bad

 

yeah that was the first day of the swap when everything was a test fit ( i was too excited and forgot the rotor direction and centering rings!). as of right now the vents are leaning to the rear of the car as i previously mentioned....

if i had to work on my car on the street, id probably be fully stock right now ! lol. my hats off to u

i saw a sig somewhere around the org with a guy who was doing a complete engine swap out on the street with a cherry picker and everything as the cars were passing by. now that takes the cake. try to pull that **** off in CA and cops would bust a cherry for you

 

I left my car on jack stands on a busy city street for about 10 hours while we ran around trying to get the 3rd gen reds to fit in my strut housings. Some people even came up and asked what the hell we'd been doing for so long.

I remember a few pictures of guys doing VQ35 swaps out on the street as well, good for a laugh.

 

i am telling u, it takes ***** to do an oil change on the street let alone a complete trial and error project like a 3.5 swap. some people are real enthusiasts, guess im not

 

I think you're talking about JeEvE's full DE-K swap in his 4th gen. I remember seeing the photos because it was so badass. And so I quickly dug up the best shot:

 

yup thats him ! that picture is the $hit. i wonder where the cherry picker rests after the swap

 

lol perfect timing. just found out that i have 3 damaged studs. two on front driver and one one passenger rear. lug nuts wont even go on them. prolly last time i got my tires balanced, the a$$hats dragged the wheels on the threads to do this damage. and if that wasnt enough, i just found out that the battery is dead too. time for optima red top !