ebay cross drilled rotors installed, also rear KYB shocks

[berettaboi]

pretty stoked! it'll be nice to have fresh brakes to not worry about on the front! i'll keep updating over the next months and years to see if they end up warping or cracking. they were bought from a canada seller "hansell autoparts - VIK AUTOPARTS DISTRIBUTION INC. (hansellauto@gmail.com)'' for a total of $75.71 US taxes in (canadian 13%) shipped to my door. they are stock thickness rotors, not thinner/lightweight. pads, meh stock style, we'll see how much dust they blast off. an additional charge of $15 and i could have gotten ceramic pads... figure i can upgrade to ceramic later if i don't like these, and get a better brand as well.

i chiseled off much of the crusty rust on the calipers, mounts, hubs and lower portion of the old struts. then wire wheeled to acceptable look, and then blasted with black paint. nice and fresh! pulled out the slider pin bolts and cleaned them, and lubed them back up.

i'm now waiting for the paint to dry on the upper shock mount plate for the rears... yanked out my completely dead shocks, and almost finished installing some fresh KYB excel g shocks. looking forward to the feel of that as well! new monroe strutmate mounts as well even though the old ones still look great. pulled the rear drums to chisel and wire wheel them as well, fresh black paint!

i will take a caliper to the new and my old rotors and measure the thickness and post it up soon enough as well.

[berettaboi]

1st pic above shows the box the pads came in... unless ceramic pads have shiny metallic particles in them as well, they most certainly were just tossed in this box... i originally asked how much the upgrade was, then i opted not to pay the extra, but this box came i was pretty happy! but i scuffed up the pads before installing and noticed metal flakes...

2nd pic is a straight forward way to pop your ABS sensors out (after you undo the one screw). gently tap it out with a screwdriver and a hammer. i put anti seize on the plastic as well, if i ever need to pull it out again. the first sensor on one side, i did break the tab there... it's not hard to break if it is original. a bit of JB weld upon assembly, and it should be good to go... i also cleaned the metal stub that reads the wheel on the axle... it was pretty crusty on mine... so maybe my ABS will work now! not that i really want that...


last pic here is the box that the rotors came in. part # will be different from side to side... direction of cross drilling.

[berettaboi]

ok new ones are 0.804"(20.43mm), and my old ones i pulled (mainly warped... i recall last time i checked they should be able to be resurfaced... still in spec) are 0.781" and 0.782" (19.93mm). i really need a passenger side wheel bearing now! a lot of play in that bastard! i'm hoping to get a hold of a socket that will fit that... should be able to rent it free in the area, or borrow. try to snug it up, see if that will work for now.

[berettaboi]

little update, brakes are working excellent so far. actually grab earlier in the pedal as well. for the cost of the kit, i could maybe get all normal stock rotors and midrange pads... and the rear shocks feel amazing as well!

[berettaboi]

another quicky update. brakes are still doing well, there is still brake fade as they get hotter with my rather spirited delivery driving... fairly comparable to stock i guess. and the pads still stink the same when you get them toasty...

also cleaning the ABS sensors didn't help my issue at all, i'm certain the module is problematic.

[3X00-Modified]

Ohm check the sensors and also inspect the ring on the axle, if one is cracked and one tooth is spaced further than another then it will respond as brake lockup. Also if your ABS light is just on then do a continuity check on the wires going to the module... You may have a split/broken wire somewhere between the module and the sensors, I know that happened to me once.

Sorry but the best pads and rotors that you can put on these cars are Centric premium rotors and Centric Ceramic pads as well... But even then I think you will still experience brake fade and smell the brakes if your rough on it since these are undersized for the weight of the vehicle. The 11" N-body rotors and pad setup is more properly sized for these cars. It's unfortunate that you have to switch wheel bolt patterns to get it to work though.

[berettaboi]

Thanks for the ideas on the ABS issues. I'll have to look further into it for sure. I now have a few spare ABS parts (the brains!) from a known working car of the same year, thanks to Ryan/Beretta (my semi-local beretta scavenger!) he's not lying when he says he has enough spare parts to build another car (minus the underbody I suppose!).

I know there are more expensive/better options for rotors and pads as well, but I was looking for best bang for the buck stockish easy upgrade. What I found on ebay, the kit I purchased, seems to be doing the trick for me!

AN UPDATE: It's been about 3000km so far (i would say 1500 hwy and 1500 hard driven/semi aggressive -pizza delivering- city driving). they seem to be wearing evenly, and I have noticed that they have less stopping power when COLD (or with a skin of rust on them). Around the block and they stopping much better than my worn out stock ones... the only issue with my old stock/basic setup was warped rotors and well worn pads.

[Barry]

Get some hawk or ebc pads. I only got 2000 miles out of cheap pads driving hard. Ebc green stuff lasted almost 5 times as long. The cheap ones would fade on a simple 60 to zero stop. The greenstuffs could handle 2 60 to zeros before fade

[3X00-Modified]

I run hawk, but they make quite a bit of dust.

[ifixalot]

ABS light was on in my 93 minivan. Passenger side wheel bearing started making noise shortly after.
I replaced that bearing and the ABS light went out.
It could be that wobble in the bearing prevents the sensor from reading the pulses on the hub.

[3X00-Modified]

Only the rear hubs would cause that since they are integrated sensors. The fronts read off the axle and typically never have issues if the bearing is going out.

[ifixalot]

It was the front bearing on my mini van but they were integral units. I don't see what difference it makes since the sensor picks
up magnetic pulses from the toothed wheel. If that wheel is wobbling or vibrating whether it's on the axle or on the bearing, I believe it can cause
a problem with the ABS. The sensor may see the vibration as extra pulses so it thinks that wheel is going faster than the other wheels.
That bearing needs to be replaced, tightening the nut won't do anything. So I think he should
fix the bearing before chasing other things that may not be the problem. IMHO

[3X00-Modified]

Most of the time the integrated units are much closer in proximity and the sensor itself is damaged by the bad bearing resulting in the ABS light coming on at the same time. Where as the outer units like ours have a toothed ring yes but it's setup to read on the back side, not the top or bottom so if the bearing is bad the alignment is not affected enough to cause a bad reading. I'm talking from experience on these cars with this type of setup so I would think that would apply more than comparing to an integrated front unit.

It also takes no time at all to ohm out the sensors in each wheel, you can actually do it from the plug on the firewall if you know which wires go where. That's how I found my cut wire to my LF wheel one time.

[berettaboi]

I'm almost sure that's it not one of the sensors as the module clickity clacks (solenoid and/or electronic sounds). and dash lights are on (flash and then stay on when noise stops), just after start up and well before i put it in gear or move the car at all

[3X00-Modified]

well that's some left out information then... With that info then its probably your main unit that's attached to the master that's bad. But I would still Ohm out the sensors or bring it to GM to see if they can pull the ABS code so you don't replace un-necessary stuff.