UKSaabs

I fitted one of the 9000 calipers to my T16S today and since there has been discussion here bfore about how to connect the hoses, I thought I'd show how I did it. I'm sure I'm not the first to do it this way but I haven't seen a photo of this method before.

The 900 caliper (on rear-handbrake cars) has a rigid pipe from the caliper to a bracket mounted on the caliper, which is connected to the flexible hose. The 9000 caliper does not have this bracket, nor anywhere to mount one, and the hose will not reach. You can't mount a bracket on the caliper carrier as the caliper moves relative to this as it slides to take up pad wear and a rigid pipe would eventually fracture.

I looked at making a longer hose out of two shorter ones (I have some spare hoses for a Golf, of all things) but it would have come out too long. So instead, I decided to reverse the hose and the rigid pipework to come up with arrangement in the photo. The brackets could probably be a bit shorter but nothing touches throughout the range of steering and I don't think there are any clearance problems through the vertical range of movement either. The bracket itself is held by one of the M8 nuts that holds the ABS sensor cable bracket onto the inner wing. The hole at the other end for the hose fitting is 10mm. The fluid visible on the right leaked out in the short gap between removing the old hose and fitting the rigid pipe. It doesn't leak now it's all tightened up. Honest

An advantage of doing this instead of a longer flexible hose is that standard hoses will still fit (albeit they are fitted "backwards")so there are no complications when they need renewing.

Anyway, the other one should be a lot easier now I've done the working out and made the brackets.

Trollbooster, have you done yours yet?

I haven't got mine done, I started to make up some brakets to go on the caliper bolts to hold the end of the flexy in the same position as the original caliper and then, as we'd discussed before, realised I'd need another flexible hose to run from the caliper inlet to the bracket, as a rigid pipe would fatigue.

As it would be a special hose made up because of its short length I didn't really have time to hang about (the car was booked in for its re-test fairly shortly after this) so I just fitted the Goodridge hoses onto the standard calipers.

Wish I'd thought of doing it your way, but my T16S doesn't have ABS so no bracket holes there.

So I've still got the standard set up at the mo and am down one 9k caliper as it was needed for the Black CSE when a brake nipple sheared easier to replace the caliper rather than remove the remaining bit of bleed nipple.

Ah, that's a bit of a bummer.
Still, now at least you have a spare caliper for the other side, should you ever need it

Took the car to Snetterton today and WOW!
Last time I was there I lost out due to having to brake early for corners to avoid fade. Today, not only could I leave the braking really late due to the amazing performance of the brakes, I could do it consistently all day long without fade. This is with Brembo discs and Ferodo DS2500 calipers.

Mark P did claim to have faded them but then the car is twice as heavy with him in it

Pleased!

Nearly 4 years later, the car has failed an MOT (I've changed my MOT garage) due to the front brake hoses rubbing on the ABS sensor cables. To fix this, I have shortened the brackets I made and repositioned them. The hoses no longer rub in any suspension or steering position.

Here's the current arrangement:



I removed one of the self-tappers holding the brake-pipe union to the inner wing and bolted the bracket through the hole. This has the advantage that it doesn't use the fixing for the ABS sensor bracket so will work for non-ABS cars too.