MKIV rear aluminum caliper upgrade.

11-08-09

First off, our goal is to make the job as fun as possible without making it a chore and go as smoothly as possible without damaging or compromising the intergrity of our project.

We did this upgrade to our 92 16v GTI you can see the pics just click on the white GTI in the build projects side bar. On the GTI we did not detail the rear caliper upgrade much the calipers were new and we painted them and installed them without mentioning the steps taken to do the caliper swap. Here we will be going into more detail due to the fact that these calipers were salvage yard items but in very good working condition.

Our calipers were salvage yard items and needed desperate cleaning before painting.

The first thing we did was to take the MKIV carriers off (don't need these) and any item we didn't want to strip the original finish off of. In our case the linkage brackets for the parking brake. Next mark the spline and the bracket so you get it in the same position during later assembly. You will need a puller to take the splined bracket off makes it so much easier and be carefull not to cut the rubber seal behind the linkage bracket. Using duct tape we taped off what we didn't want stripped but left on to protect the caliper internals from the blast media. You don't want the media getting into the caliper. Use the original banjo bolt with five washers to protect the caliper and tape off. Last screw the piston all the way in so you can easily clean the caliper. At this time we are leaving the original outer piston seal to protect the caliper piston area from media entering the caliper. Here are some pics.

Can you guess which one is clean?

Despite the horrible look they were in perfect working order.

The left one needed taping off so we could get it all cleaned up.

Got the original rear caliper carriers off our Corrado G60, these things were in desperate need of some attention. The original carriers are needed to for the MKIV rear caliper conversion on our Corrado G60. Also when doing this conversion you need to use the brake pads that you would normally purchase for the factory iron calipers. In our case we are going with Mintex red box pads the only difference in the MKIV pads and the Corrado G60 pads is the MKIV pads are a little thicker.

We also got our Eurospec cross drilled and slotted rear rotors in. All we need is to clean up the rear carriers and get the paint delivered and were ready.