Stagea Brakes

[dmonic1]

haha my bad wrong picture.

[DaveB]

I have a series 2 (RSV) stagea and i am running R33GTST front discs and 4 piston callipers. i had to modify the disc covers and i am using a 5mm wheel spacer so that the rims wouldn't rub on the calliper. u could grind off the nissan emblem and they would clear but it could possibly be the mags i have on my car.

I wonder if the front brake setup of the RSV is different to the RS FourV? How did you mount the callipers - were the R33 calliper bolts different to the stagea ones? Also were the brake lines compatible with the stagea?

You can get rotors slotted - i,ve done it . The slots are straight which is not as "cool looking" as the curved ones but they do the same job. So if your rotors can stand being machined you could get them slotted. or if you buy new unslotted ones you could get slots put on them.

Cool, but can they crack when you get slots cut?

[dmonic1]

ok so here goes, i have an early model series 2 and i think that might be the reason why i was able to do the convertion. i had no issue with different bolt sizes and yes people are correct that the R34 calipers do use the smaller diameter bolts but they also have a much larger disc and usualy cost twice as much. i think that with later model series 2's anything after 1999 you are most likely to need the R34 brakes. the brake lines are not a standard swap as i brought R33 braided lines and even these need to be changed.

to be honest go to a wrecker like i did borrow a shagged disc and maybe put a deposit down for a loan of a calliper and just try it. u will have to modify the disc shroud or it will rub on the outside of the bigger disc. if it fits then go and buy a pair or set of callipers and some good second hand discs, go and get them machined which will cost about $100 for four. take the callipers to a place that will make up some braided lines to exactly suit your car and that will be ADR approved and Bobs your uncle.

You then can then fill out a request to upgrade/modify form from ur local traffic and rego place and then u will have a legal mod that u can tell the cops to piss off if they hassle you.

to be honest i read about alot people asking for advice on things that are so easily checked youself. if u cant undo or are to lazy to undo a calliper bolt and find out the diameter of what you do have then i cant imagine that you even need to do the upgrade in the first place.

[DaveB]

Thanks dmonic1, sounds like R34gtst is the best possibility to investigate.

I agree with you that some people appear overly lazy; asking for every little detail to be explained. Personally I just want to try to be as sure as I can before wasting more money on something that doesn't fit. I already have a pair of (as another member put it) '290mm slotted paper-weights' because some advice on here was incorrect; I have had the brakes apart, changed pads, examined calipers etc. and it doesn't help me much until I get some new parts to compare to; and I don't want to just buy something without knowing if it will fit. There aren't too many wreckers near me (that I know of at least) who will oblige in the area of R34 brakes cheaply/in single quantity etc. I would rather skip as much 'backyard engineering' as possible (my backyard engineering usually turns out awful) and buy something that will work because, as I've found, it's actually pretty difficult to improve on stock in a lot of ways (and keep reliability/quality) - you usually need a lot of money, and/or a lot of time & research.

[pintaline]

i got some R33 gtst calipers and discs cheap, had a go at fitting them and all i could see that didn't work was the bolts. (didn't look at break lines but ill be getting braided when i do it)

all you need is longer bolts to suit the 33 calipers and a spacer for the bolt to make it fatter for where it goes thru the caliper mount on the car.

for this, i found that a half inch copper pipe joiner works, all you have to do is cut along it's length with a hacksaw and it pretty much fits in the mount hole. a tiny bit of filing may be required in the cut but basically you just put the joiner in a pair of multigrips or a vice and gently close the gap where you cut. then tap it into the mount hole. they cost about 40c each and took a couple of minutes to cut and file. i haven't actually mounted the caliper with these yet as i haven't had the time but ill let you all know how it goes when i find the time.

the other thing i found was that the thread where the mounting bolt goes on the R33 calipers, can be pressed out. so if someone could make a new insert or find another thread insert from another type of caliper with the same thread as the standard stagea caliper bolt then it would be a direct bolt on job.

i have also been told that R34 gtt brakes will bolt straight on, no mods.

D.

[ssshonky]

in the defence of the people that are getting bagged out for asking not doing- that also has to do with limiting the time the car is off the road. but yeah.. seeing/doing for yourself is great but sometimes you just need a bit of guidance

[Stinky Rooster]

For the love of god please dont use copper ANYTHING when mounting brakes on a car. Copper does a thing called "work hardening" where the longer it is under pressure, the more brittle it becomes. In the case of a brake calliper, I am talking seriously brittle here, where it will get to the point of shattering. The only way to avoid this is through annealing and this would involve removing the callipers every few thousand km's for heat treatment.

Either use a steel sleeve, or drill and tap the mounting lugs on the upright to suit the R33 bolts.

[Tangles]

good brake mods for series 1 and 2, not too full-on but good nevertheless:

* new $150 set front/rear brake pads

* braided brake lines, maltech or your local specialist

* engine swaybar/suspn mounted master cylinder brake stopper

* DBA slotted rotors, front only on mine

good pads with crisp bite on slotted rotors, with awesome pedal feel & no movement in the lines and/or master cylinder

all up around $600ish, stock calipers stock rear disc

[BensDR30]

For the love of god please dont use copper ANYTHING when mounting brakes on a car. Copper does a thing called "work hardening" where the longer it is under pressure, the more brittle it becomes. In the case of a brake calliper, I am talking seriously brittle here, where it will get to the point of shattering. The only way to avoid this is through annealing and this would involve removing the callipers every few thousand km's for heat treatment.

Either use a steel sleeve, or drill and tap the mounting lugs on the upright to suit the R33 bolts.

Amen to that. I had to pick my jaw up off the floor when I read about using a copper sleeve on brake callipers. If you value your life, please don't do it. Once that sleeve fails (and it will), you will have a calliper that is not secured. I saw a MAJOR rollover on the track caused by a calliper jamming against the disc after a bolt failed. The lateral load on calliper bolts is massive, far beyond what the humble copper sleeve could cope with.

good brake mods for series 1 and 2, not too full-on but good nevertheless:

* new $150 set front/rear brake pads

* braided brake lines, maltech or your local specialist

* engine swaybar/suspn mounted master cylinder brake stopper

* DBA slotted rotors, front only on mine

good pads with crisp bite on slotted rotors, with awesome pedal feel & no movement in the lines and/or master cylinder

all up around $600ish, stock calipers stock rear disc

I can vouch for the improvement that even fresh pads, a fluid flush & new discs (slotted front, stock rear) will provide. I couldn't afford braided lines when I serviced my brakes, but a stopper is another must. Before spending big $ on a brake upgrade, it's worth considering if what you've got is actually working properly.

[pintaline]

For the love of god please dont use copper ANYTHING when mounting brakes on a car. Copper does a thing called "work hardening" where the longer it is under pressure, the more brittle it becomes. In the case of a brake calliper, I am talking seriously brittle here, where it will get to the point of shattering. The only way to avoid this is through annealing and this would involve removing the callipers every few thousand km's for heat treatment.

Either use a steel sleeve, or drill and tap the mounting lugs on the upright to suit the R33 bolts.

ok, maybe ill rethink the copper then... i think it's a bit small for steel(?), the joiner has a wall thickness of about .5mm and the mounting lugs are just loops, the bolt passes straight thru and the thread is in the caliper (it's the thing that presses out) i showed the bit with the thread in it to the engineer next to my work, in view of re-tapping it the suit the stag bolt and he said not to bother, just to sleeve the new longer 33 bolt. so now i guess i should investigate having sleeves made..... damn. more work.

D.

[QWK32]

ok, so with all the recent talk of the R33 GTST brake conversion onto a stagea, there is alot of doubt over it. it is something i have been looking into and i already had all the gear sitting in the garage. i decided to go and check out a few things this arvo

For starters i have a Series 2, RS Four V. so this info is for you guys that have the same.

What i found:

- the R33 rotor fits on the Stagea hub without rubbing on anything.

- the stagea bolt is a M14 x 1.5mm with a thred length of 50mm and the R33 bolt is a M12 x 1.25mm with a thred length of 35mm

- the calipers mounting holes are the same centers as the stagea hub. so to fit the caliper to the hub you need to get a M12 x 1.25mm bolt with a thred length of 50-52mm. make a bush to locate the bolt in the center of the stagea hubs hole, i'll be using stainless and turning it up at work, i'd also recommend using a decent material as a bush (mild or stainless)

- also to locate the caliper central to the rotor. between the stagea hub and the R33 caliper you need to put a spacer to space the caliper out. i tested it with the washer off the stagea caliper bolt and it centralised it really well, so a spacer of about 3mm is needed. i'll be making a spacer abit more robust than a washer, and i'd suggest the same to anyone else doing it.

- there is about 5mm of clearance between the calipers mount and the rotor, so no rubbing there either.

- the R33 caliper sits out about 20mm further towards the wheel spokes than the stagea calipers, so check you have enough room.

- now for the brake lines. the R33 caliper brake line fitting is a flare type fitting. the Stagea brake line fitting is a Banjo bolt (same type as turbo oil and water line fittings). but both the calipers do have the same thred size and pitch. so what i tried was fitting the Banjo fitting to the R33 caliper and it screwed in. BUT.........

the bolt is about 2mm too long and bottoms out in the hole, so it wont clamp up the feed line and brass washers. solution, there should be no problem in cutting 2-3mm off the end of the Banjo bolt to suit it to the R33 caliper hole depth. just make sure to clean up the center hole in the Banjo after cutting to make sure its clear and clean of swarf. now before anyone says anything about it the R33 caliper does have a machined flat surface at the brake line entry that will give a nice sealing face for the brass washer on the Banjo fitting, almost like nissan was going to use the Banjo style fitting and then at the last minute decided not to.

also the R33 caliper doesn't have the piece of the casting on the caliper that the stagea one does, the bit that stops the female part of the Banjo fitting turning when you are doing up the bolt part. just use a spanner or shifter to hold it still while you do up the bolt.

i think thats about it. next trial fit will be the rear brakes. i have a pair of R32 GTST rear brakes in the garage, and from what i can find out is that the R32 GTST and GTR and the R33 GTST all use the same rear brakes. i'll be looking at this to see what is envolved in fitting these up soon.

also some pics of the caliper and rotor fitted, and a few other i took today.

Edited January 14, 2009 by QWK32

[pintaline]

any chance if your parts work that you would make another set? ill pay of course...

D.

[DaveB]

Thanks for the info QWK32; I think the RS Four V would have to be about the most common stagea model in Oz so should help most people. It's great to see pictures of what we're talking about too, to compare the R33 hardware with the stagea hardware. I can see that the '33 pad is quite a bit smaller than the stagea pad?

two questions for anybody...

- is the 4-pot R33 setup a 'monobloc' design or does the caliper still slide?

- heard a few people mention this now, so does anybody know for sure if the R34 hardware is caliper bolt and line compatible with this model stagea (S2, RS Four V)?????????? I'm thinking second-hand calipers and new R34 slotted rotors (yes, you can ACTUALLY GET those ) and then I think R34 braided lines would fit? (and you can ACTUALLY GET THOSE TOO!!)

I realise that you can of course get R33 hardware too, and it is more common, but if the R34 hardware fits without modification that would be my choice. Tired of my rusty old warped front rotors that rattle the steering wheel under brakes at speed.

Edited January 14, 2009 by DaveB

[Duncan]

Good details QWK32. I was running the same setup (32 gtr/33 gtst 4 spots) on mine and it was exactly as you described.

The only thing is I am surprised you needed to space the caliper to centre it on the rotor. The rotor and the caliper's offset are made to work together, and on my S1 they were fine without spacing it out at all. I guess there may be a small difference between S1 and S2.

But the 32 gtr/33 gtst 4 spot conversion is a great idea because:

Cheap and plentiful to buy

Plenty of options for brand new discs and pads availalbe at reasonable prices

[darrinspencer]

I have a series 2 RS4 AWD

I have used R34GTT front and rear calipers, disks and bolts. All bolted up perfect with NO mods needed.

The disk to caliper offsets were perfect, no need to fit spacers. Bolts were the right length and diameter.

R34 disks are 310mm, R33 are 297mm. The bigger R34 disks cleared the front backing plates, no need to trim

The only mods were the the brake hoses.

For the front I used the complete stagea banjo bolt and lines. As QWK32 mentioned, the banjo bolt is approx 2-3mm too long. I machined down the length so it did not bottom out in the caliper. There was still plenty of thread left on the banjo bolt so it does not strip the caliper thread. The other option is to remove the caliper flange nut SEAT in the bottom of the caliper, but I preferred to keep the calipers standard.

For the rear brake lines, I used the R34 complete brake line that goes from the caliper to where the flex line mounts to the stagea metal hard line on the body of the car. R33 rear brakes are the same as R34.

When mounting the rear calipers, they foul the metal backing plate. You need to trim 5-10mm of the backing plates to suit the new calipers.

If you have a series 2 RWD, the front brakes are DIFFERENT to the AWD stagea.

I have tried fitting my R34 brakes to Greenghosts RWD stagea and they did not fit.

Can not confirm the exact details, but from memory the mounting hoses in the front hubs were to suit 12mm bolts, not the 14mm. Pretty sure this is where you can use R33 calipers etc. Best talk to Greenghost

The rear brakes on the RWD where the same as the AWD stagea, so the R34/R33 parts will fit.

The R32, R33 and R34 are all monoblac design and do not slide.

As for wheel clearance, I am using r34 GTR wheels so there there is heaps of clearance, but I am pretty sure CHOOK is using R34 calipers with standard 16" stagea wheels with enough caliper clearance. Best check, otherwise you will be up new wheels as well.

Hopefully this will clear some questions.

First pic is a series 1 stagea caliper with banjo bolt

The other pic is a r34 caliper (red one) with the flare nut. You can see the flare nut seat in the bottom of the caliper thread which is pressed in. I believe you can remove the seat by screwing in a screw and pull the seat out.

[darrinspencer]

QWK 32

The pic you have shown of the front R33 caliper has a REAR disk fitted. It has "rear" written on the disk also you can tell by the diameter it is too small.

That is why you are having offset problems.

[gslrallysport]

Has anyone got a spare or used set of S2 pads I can purchase off them? If I can get my hands on a set, I can get them laser cut, then get QFM to turn them into pads, all I'd need to know is what the original pad thicknesses are. Pricing on custom pads like this (in any quantity) is $110 for HPX (Bendix Ultimate type equivalent pad), or $149 for A1RM (Ferodo DS2500 type equivalent pad). For more info on those pad materials, checkout http://www.qfmperformance.com

Side bar: We've got DB1144's in A1RM compound to suit the rear of S1 on the shelf, $119.

Also, if someone can send me an old set of DB1250/1398 I can get the S1 front's made up for the same price as the S2 pads.

If anyone can help, feel free to PM me, or give me a bell on 1300 884 836. If there's enough interest I can certainly look at doing a group buy, and that will also help cut down on the price of the donor pads if I have to purchase them new from overseas.

Cheers,

Greg

[gslrallysport]

Also, just further the above, anyone who supplies me with old pads, or ones that can be copied, (ie. S1 fronts, and S2 front and rear) will receive those pads free in either HPX or A1RM when they arrive.

Regards,

Greg

[QWK32]

QWK 32

The pic you have shown of the front R33 caliper has a REAR disk fitted. It has "rear" written on the disk also you can tell by the diameter it is too small.

That is why you are having offset problems.

see thats what i said to the guy at the wreakers when i got it but he told me that, no it was indeed a front it had just been written on wrong. plus its not as deep as a rear disk is and it doesn't have the section for the handbrake shoes to clamp onto.

[darrinspencer]

see thats what i said to the guy at the wreakers when i got it but he told me that, no it was indeed a front it had just been written on wrong. plus its not as deep as a rear disk is and it doesn't have the section for the handbrake shoes to clamp onto.

If it is not a rear disc off a R33, it must be off some other different car. Check the diameter, it should be 297mm.

Looking at the photo and the backing plate diameter, it is no where near 297mm.