Refreshing the front brakes
(This post was created retrospectively)
The car was fine for a daily but the one thing that was bothering me was that the brakes were warped. I didn’t know whether it was the front or the rears, but the front brakes definitely needed an upgrade. I heard about the Mini Cooper brake upgrade and opted for the below parts. OzHonda thread for reference.
- 99 CRV front calipers - stamped 17CL15VN, ITR brakes go for $150 but I picked up the set for $90 including the brackets below
- 99 CRV caliper brackets - stamped 23T, ideally I would have wanted 25T (so I can fit 25mm rotors instead of 23mm but I didn’t know at the time.)
- RDA7996 Mini Cooper Blanks - JDMyard wanted $210 or something for the pair but I found an online retailer offering the pair for $130.
- Castrol DOT4 Brake fluid - sourced from Supercheap Auto
- Intima SS brake pads - they cost about $90 for the front two pairs from JDMYard
I found the parts online on Facebook and Henry picked them up for me and came over to watch the process and also polish his headlights. We got to polishing both our headlights and I hit the caliper and the brackets with some degreaser and coarse sand paper. Danny also came for the hangs and brought some red caliper paint, leftover caliper grease he had lying around and also his caliper spreader. The next morning I took the brakes to the backyard, hit them with water and more elbow grease to get a good surface to paint on. I hit it with about four coats of paint.
Then the next weekend, Henry came over again and we had a go at installing the brakes. It would have been a pretty straightforward process if it wasn’t for stripped locating screw on the rotor. Danny came over with larger Phillips head screwdrivers and we still couldn’t get them off. We popped over to Joeys to steal his drill, some drill bits and then went to town on the screw head. Once it was sufficiently drilled down (the bits were pretty tired), we used an M8 bolt and threaded it into the open bolt hole to pull the caliper away from the knuckle. This basically popped the head of the screw off, splitting the screw in two and the caliper came unstuck.
After this it was a pretty simple process to clean and regrease the caliper pins, spread the piston back, pop in the pads with some grease and, install the new RDA rotors and then on top of it the new calipers. At this point Henry had left for Carols and Danny was gone too, so I employed my mums help to step on the pedal so that I could flush the brake fluid from the front two brakes and fill the caliper pistons with fresh new fluid. At some point in time Ashutosh and Joey came over, and while the car was on jacks, I started the car and popped it into first and it seemed like the caliper was sticking, as even without the brakes depressed, you could hear the brakes contacting the rotor. So we pulled the wheels off, respread the caliper and installed everything again. This seemed to have resolved the issue so my suspicion is that originally I did not spread the caliper back enough???
Post install, I did a quick brake check, and it stopped on a dime. They JUST fit under the VTIR blades as well. That evening we went back to Joey’s workshop so that we could get installing on his new door actuators, and I took a couple nice pictures.
Apparently, the rotors are pretty good for street use however since they’re only 23mm thick (ITR rotors are 25mm), they get heated pretty quickly for track use and need extra ducting. I need to either find 25T caliper brackets or take my current items to a shop and get them to mill 1mm of each face of the bracket such that the gap is 25mm thick instead of 23mm. That’s for later though.
