I rushed back from work to fit the new rear calipers. Should take an hour max, then off for a drive. Pah!
First mission is getting the handbrake cable onto the caliper mount, Its on a huge spring, and creating enough loose cable to slot it on is a nightmare. Eventually got it on, and then found i'd threaded the handbrake cable incorrectly! Off it came again, then back on... lots of swearing. Then fitted the flexihose for the hydraulics. Bolted it onto the upright.... sorted.
Now to the other side, and it all starts going wrong. Firstly, the handbrake cable is ten times harder to fit because its under tension from the other side, so the central console in the car had to come off to adjust it. Then, when trying to fit it the spring pinged off onto the floor - that took 20 minutes to get back on. Then, with the handbrake in place, i went to fit the caliper and found the handbrake wouldn't fit in between the pads. Spent an hour trying to compress it... that wasn't going to happen. After a while figured that i needed to twist the piston to adjust it.... and then it fitted. Unfortunately i've now been fitting brakes for over 3 hours! At least there's just the bleeding left, that shouldn't be too painful... (pah again!)
Bleeding the brakes is to be done using the Gunson easybleed kit. Its a great idea, whack a nozzle onto a car tyre - this provides pressured air to force the fluid through the system. I set this up and fluid instantly started pouring on the floor from the rear. Ooops.... i'd completely forgotten to tighten one of the connectors. With that done, we went to bleed again and a pipe popped off the easybleed kit sending a whole pot of fluid all over the floor, car, me, etc.... i even got some in my eye! (ouch... lots of water to flush that out!) We bled all four brakes twice, then with another easybleed explosion, gave up and went back to the pumping pedal option for the final bleed. Eventually, seems ok. Managed to get brake fluid EVERYWHERE!
The brakes appear working fine, I can't push them to the bulkhead. Obviously, new pads all around they're not actually stopping me too quickly yet!
The problem is the amount of dead travel before they even start biting, the pedal is flopping toward the driver a long way. In order to match the other 2 pedals it would make more sense to have the pedal adjusted back so it starts nearer the bulkhead.... but if i adjust it back too much further it will run the risk of hitting the stops (which i believe is an SVA fail as well as being unsafe!)
So really, like the clutch, i feel i need a stop bar that prevents the pedal flopping toward the driver too far. But there isn't such a thing. I'll post on the forum for ideas i think!
With the bleeding complete we refitted and torqued the wheels for our first test drive. Unfortunately its going to be short as its 9:30 and the neighbours probably don't like to hear lairy hayabusas at this time.
We drove it around on some private land for about 5 minutes, and nothing fell off, so thats a good start! Managed some forwards, reverses, even second gear for 3 seconds. Its an odd drive sitting so far back and seeing the wheels steer ahead of you... can't wait to get some speed up! Oh, and a bird decided to relieve itself on the bonnet. What aim!
A few tweaks, some more driving, and some better photos tomorrow! Including the new sexy polished exhaust headers.
Todays Build: 1 & 2 people, 5 hours.. Total build time so far: 139 hours, 216 man-hours.
