So this is what I've been up to ....
After upgrading my rear brakes to 306mm 2 piece rears I've been looking at upgrading the fronts to something that not only worked well but looked equally impressive, having looked around the net I was initially going to get some of Badger Bills 330mm 2 piece upgrades using the standard brembo's, although I'm sure they work awesome and if the truth be known they would be more practical then what I've gone for I just couldn't bring myself to do it especially as others have gone for some monster kits.
The next step had me looking at larger ready made kits, naturally you always look for the biggest and best so I came across the Brembo Grand Turismo 6 pot package with 380mm 2 piece rotors .... At over 4k this kit is defiantly not for me
so the only option was to try and build something similar. At the same time I was taking great interest in James Parkins build thread where he was doing something similar with some monster 6 pot Brembo Porsche 18z calipers, as soon as I saw them and had done some research I decided these were what I wanted so I set about looking for some to refurbish. As luck would have it I stumbled across 2 brand spanking new 18z calipers complete with the genuine pad fitting kit for an unbelievable price so I quickly snapped them up
The discs I had decided had to be 380mm but I wasn't prepared to pay the £1000 most company's wanted for them so these were bought second hand. The ones I ended up with were originally fitted to a big spec impreza so luckily the bells were already drilled to 5x100 the only thing I was not to sure on was the offset of the bells as it was a lot higher then I originally wanted. At 380x36 they were also monsters!
The next step was to buy a front hub assembly so I could mock my kit up off the car, a quick look on eBay and a golf anniversary hub was on its way. Once arrived I test fitted a front disc to check fitment .... This is where the problems started. I had made sure the bell would fit over the 57.1mm hub lip but had not taken into account the little ridge at the bottom of the lip ... A lot of swearing and a trip to the machine
shop and they were taken out a few mm, this is where
problem no2 came ... The bells were indeed to higher offset and although the bell itself fitted onto the hub it was clear that the rotor wanted to sit where the ball joint was
![[:@]](/forums/styles/seatcupra/oldforumsmileys/furious.gif "Furious [:@]")
At this point I wanted to cry and wished I had just bought an off the shelf kit, a quick phone call to some friends and a meeting at the pub was called to figure out what we were going to do. The options were £340 + VAT for some custom bells or to machine something to go between the hub and bell to space it out, the outcome was to machine a large hub centric spacer that would space the bells out and allow the wheel to centre at the same time. Once back at the workshop I bolted a rotor together to see how big a spacer needed machining ..... To our utter amazement the rotors were so big that the ball joint sat inside it, after a few minutes making sure it could not catch I was the happiest man around!
Problem no3 turned out to be just as lucky. The discs rotors are 36mm and we were a bit unsure they would actually fit over the rotor with the pads fitted, a set of pads were then ordered and it turns out there is a 1mm gap each side! I know this is extremely tight so if needed I will mill a tiny bit off each pad but fingers crossed it will be perfect.
Problem no4 was the hardest to sort ... Bring a one off kit there are no brackets available to attach them so we had to shim the caliper in place and measure up for some. Sounds simple but with such little clearance and so tiny tolerances it's a bit of a pain!
So that's where I am now. Today I ordered 2 pieces of billet alloy to machine the brackets from, should hopefully be here next week.
If you have managed to read all my waffle without falling asleep then here's some crap pics off my phone. They don't look big in the pics but they certainly are!
This is a 19" Lamborghini wheel
This is a large jar of coffee for scale
looks like I'll be selling them to fund a cheapy set of 19's . 
![[B)]](/forums/styles/seatcupra/oldforumsmileys/shades.gif "Cool [B)]")
