[IridiumRS400]

dang op iridium, patience of a saint

Yeah, the caliper guy is retired from the day-to-day business, but still does caliper rebuilding and painting, except he's a crew of one vs a half-dozen when his shop was operating. Therefore, he does the work on his own schedule. He does excellent work, including finding a couple of the piston bores on my Stoptech caliper that needed "cleaning-up", as I believed one of the front calipers was dragging.

I could have just done the LSD install, and with my race shop turning it around in a couple days, it would have taken less than a week of downtime.

Fortunately I have our newest acquistion - a '21 Audi SQ5 Sportback, to serve as the stand-in until my Q is re-assembled.

BTW, slide hammer and wedge? I used a simple pry bar to pop-out the half-shafts.

 

[IridiumRS400]

So in parallel with the LSD installation, after 4 weeks waiting for my Stoptech calipers to be rebuilt and painted, I picked them up yesterday. Pics don't do these justice - the resin paint, which is applied and oven baked-on, looks amazing. All the piston seals and dust seals were replaced. During the disassembly and rebuild process, one of the six pistons in each of the front calipers were found to be sticky, so that condition was corrected.

Front calipers (w/new Hawk HPS Pads installed):

Rear calipers:

Beauty shot (Dining Room Table makes a great staging area):

Next step - installation on my Q, which should be done by this weekend.

 

[Pillboy]

So in parallel with the LSD installation, after 4 weeks waiting for my Stoptech calipers to be rebuilt and painted, I picked them up yesterday. Pics don't do these justice - the resin paint, which is applied and oven baked-on, looks amazing. All the piston seals and dust seals were replaced. During the disassembly and rebuild process, one of the six pistons in each of the front calipers were found to be sticky, so that condition was corrected.

Front calipers (w/new Hawk HPS Pads installed):
View attachment 103684
View attachment 103686
Rear calipers:
View attachment 103685
View attachment 103687
Beauty shot (Dining Room Table makes a great staging area):
View attachment 103688
Next step - installation on my Q, which should be done by this weekend.

I missed it somewhere along the line, were these used ones you bought or ones you had bought new and were to the point they needed a rebuild?

 

[IridiumRS400]

I missed it somewhere along the line, were these used ones you bought or ones you had bought new and were to the point they needed a rebuild?

The calipers, along with the rest of the BBK, were bought used, with about 17k miles, mostly DD, but with some track usage thrown-in, according to the previous owner.

 

[IridiumRS400]

Got the calipers installed and the brake system bled last night. Only hiccup I ran into was the rear calipers were re-assembled by my rebuilder/painter with the pad guide plates installed with both tension plates (#9 below) installed on the in-board side of the caliper. The tension plates (my name for them) have a bump which keeps a side load on the pads as they travel/translate with piston pressure.

The end result was one pad dropped-in and the other pad would not, with not enough width for the pad. I had to remove one tension plate and replace it so that its partner was the smooth (no bump) plate. Apparently Stoptech figures their calipers would never be rebuilt LOL, so they didn't bother to Murphy-proof these slightly different guide plates.

After I figured that out, the rest of the install was uneventful.

Pics below are after a wash and shake-down run:

As for the Quaife LSD, what a change from the stock open diff (Duh!)...

It's fun to put the power down on a corner exit - the rear end just hooks and the car launches. I have to re-adjust both the driver and the car for higher speed turns - the car has more understeer with the LSD, which is not a surprise. I have the Hotchkis Rear STB set at the middle position right now, I'll move it up one setting to see if that makes any difference in how the car rotates.