new brake option for mk1 fronts Maybe????

[cjhauser]

Im not sure if this is going to work or if anyone has tried it yet but here it goes..... I have heard so many great things about the st205 GT4 brakes but they are so damb hard to find exspecaly in the USA.
I also have a 99 tacoma 4x4(daily driver) and was looking at the brakes when I did the brake job last weekend and the calipers looked close... I went to the junk yard and found that the 4 pot calipers from a 91to 95 4runner should fit great all that is needed is an adapter plate made up, because of the differant mounting. The car brakes bolt on to the rotor side of the hub and the truck bolts on away from the rotor. This leave about a half inch gap to put an adaper plate on the MR2 and you could in thery us any rotor dia you want just make the plate the langth to fit. I didnt find a tocoma to compair things to. but 4 runners are really comon and weigh 5400lb a lot more than a tacoma so maybe stronger brakes?

So has anyone tried the 4pot 4runner, tacoma, t100, or tundra brakes? I think land crusers maybe used simmiler calipers too...
What do you guys think is it worth trying?

[Murf]

Deffo worth a shot, do you have any pics?

[Paul Woods]

sadly 4runner,tundra,t100 and tacomas are as rare here as the st205 is there :( ,would love to see pics of it done though :thumbsup:

[cjhauser]

I will have trouble with making the adapter plate. I live in a town of about 3000 and finding people to do anything custom is like handing them over arm and maybe a leg too. So I will have to make it with a drill press, angle grinder, and a hack saw. I used to have a machine shop at work i could use but that went away a few years ago. and sadly I only got the passenger side caliper from the yard but rebuilt units are all over rock auto for about 100 US. When I looked at them the 4runner/t100 looked better because the bolts are closer to the caliper pistons wich makes smaller rotor dia sizes easer. IE stock roters.

I will take a pic tomarow and post it here. But for now I will decribe the fit the best I can.
The 4runner caliper bolt tabs will line up with the hub tabs on the MK1 mr2. So you can make an adp plate to put where the mr2 caliper would bolt on. Infact you could maybe use the mr2 caliper as the plate just cut it????? I"ll have to look ( I just now thought of it)
Then drill and thread holes for the 4runner caliper to bolt on to the plate. The 4runner calipers are not threaded. They will bolt on the same side of the adp plate as the mr2 hub tabs. The oposit side as the rotor. They mite end up to close or far away from the rotor but it will only be by 2/3mm. Stock 4runner rotors are 25mm by about 285mm.
Tacoma rotors 22mm by 290mm.
Later tundra brakes (calipers and rotors) are just F---ING MASSIVE and swap strait to a tacoma. My freind has them on his tacoma and I want a set for my tacoma as soon as i can find them at a good price and get 17 or 18 in rims to fit them under my 16s will be to small!!!! Amagin that on an MR2... endoes anyone:-))

[Paul Woods]

Meh.... 290mm brakes are for girls :) i've got 325mm fronts with porsche 996 four pot brembos up front and 323mm rx8 rears on mk2 turbo 22v calipers all going in mine.

Total overkill on the braking required even though the car has a supercharged v6 in it,but thats why we are called twobrutal :)

[cjhauser]

Yes thats what I was thinking about tundra brakes, way overkill for the mr2. That is a realy close match for the trunda fronts. Like I said they will not fit under 16in truck rims... Prefect for the supercharged 5vz Tacoma though. there is just nothing like flying though the desert out here at 80 to 90 MPH and not a single road any where in site. V8 jeeps got nothing on a taco offroad in the desert but my friend can out preform me out there and about the only differance in our trucks is his upgraded brakes. I actauly have about 50 hp more but his truck is about 300 lb lighter.

So Paul where did you find 325mm rotors to fit a MR2??? By the way there is no way any of the truck rotors will fit a mr2. calipers only.... I only put the rotor sizes in the last post so people would have a referance to what the calipers were use with by toyota.

[Paul Woods]

Im using BMW 330D front discs,these have had spigots fitted and the 4 stud PCD drilled into them,and the calipers are radial mount so its easy to make brackets.

The rear RX8 323mm discs get the same treatment.

[cjhauser]

nice very nice.
The brackets should be easy to make to fit 4 runner/tacoma calipers too. Its just a plate with 4 theaded holes. I just dont have the proper tools so its going to be some work for me. I'm dreading cutting 0.5in plate steel with a hand saw..... aloy would probably work too but i dont have any thick enough on hand. I do have some 6mm aloy maybe i can make the brackets in that just to prove the fit then have a fabricator copy them into a suitable matairal?

[cjhauser]

4RUNNER CALIPERS WORK!!!!!
Here are the pics to prove it.
But first let me put out this disclaimer... I know how sad it is we have to state that but here it goes.
I used an aluminum plate only for prof of consept/mock up. I would in no way consider it safe to take off the jack stands let alone drive. Let me repeat that. DO NOT EVEN CONSIDER FOR ONE SECOND THAT THIS IS SAFE. IT IS NOT.

Ok now for the write up and pics.
I will use metric for mesuerments because I think most acerate/easy. So all of us in the USA just deal with it. The rest of the world has it right.
I used a 94 4runner caliper a 6mm aluminum plate and 2 4mm washers (should have been 5mm but we'll get to that.)

Here is the plate bolted in. Font and back. I put about 0.5 mm gap between the hub and caliper bolt tabs.

http://forums.twobrutal.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=1054&stc=1&d=1234482843

http://forums.twobrutal.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=1055&stc=1&d=1234482843

Next pic shows the spacing between the rotor and the end of the caliper. The rotor is a stock mk1b at 257mm. There is about exactly 20mm. I know the ruler is hard to see. So a 290mm rotor would be perfect. But if You shave a bit off the tabs I think you could posibly bring the caliper in 5mm or so. But I think 257mm is still going to be a bit small>:[

http://forums.twobrutal.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=1056&stc=1&d=1234483156

last we have the rotor between the caliper... you can see the ofset is not quit right. I used a 4mm spacer between the 4runner caliper and the adp plate it should have been 5mm. or you could use a 5mm plate between the hub and rotor.

http://forums.twobrutal.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=1057&stc=1&d=1234483156

I have a set of mass italy 15 in rims that will fit over the calipers but they rub just a bit. I will have to use a wheel spacer... My other 15s are not even remotely close to fitting. I have pics of the mass italy rims bolted on but ran out of room on the site to put it up. Sorry.

So let me know what all you guys think. Do they come close to ST205 GT4 brakes? Do you think it will be a good set up? Did i miss anything?

[snowtigger]

can you use the rear 996 brembos or do u need the front ones paul?.

good proof of concept glad we have people who think out side the box anything is better than the weedy brakes that are on my 1a, pity the tundra/4runner tacomma are like hens teeth over here.

[cjhauser]

the 4runner calipers are about $100.00 US each online. I am not sure what the ST205 GT4 calipers go for. I have never seen them for sale. But 4runner calipers are not hard at all to find here but shipping over there im not sure about. The tacomas caliper bolt tabs are a bit farther out yet then the 4runners so I dont think they will work as good. but thet mit be better on a celica...

[snowtigger]

About £100 quid if your lucky can get you some gt4 brakes then u will need a brake recondition kit for each caliper which when i last looked cost about £50 each so £200 roughly, which is about $285.

and apparently you need to coperslip the back of the brake pads cause they squeal after a couple of months every time you brake.

[Jim-SR]

you can VERY easily space the caliper further away with that setup as well, so disc size would be pretty much unlimited.

there are probably plenty more options in the UK though that the same applies for. those calipers are easy to come by where you are so they make good sense. in the UK i would think there is a better option. and for $100 per caliper you can occasionally pick up ex-Nascar calipers on ebay for $250-400 for a pair (a little more expensive, but worth it). they are usually radial mounts (again, easy to make adapters for) and they are very lightweight, youd just need to find suitable discs

those calipers look like a pretty good alternative to ST205's though for US guys who cant get hold of Celica calipers easily!

[cjhauser]

I got a set of celica 25mmx275mm rotors with the 5x100 stud pattern. Perfect for the new calipers. I went to the first machinest in town to have them redrilled to 4x100. The ahole tried to charge me $250.00 the second and last $100.00. I have a drill press is there a pdf guide or anything I can use to make sure I get the new holes lined up prefect? I just cant see paying $100.00 to drill 6 holes..... I know they have to go in the exact right spot. But 250.00/100.00 for maybe 30min of work thats just nuts and why I realy want to move.

[Marksman]

I redrilled mine using a MK1 brake disk (rotor) as a template! Just clamp the old and the new together and away you go. Are the centre bores the same? If so aligning them by touch is far easier than it sounds.

Owen.

[cjhauser]

the centers are not the same. The celica st205 gt (actuly they were labled for a poniac vibe but they are the same rotor) has a .9mm lager center. Does that 1mm make a differance?

[Marksman]

Hell yes, you want to use that hole to centre your disk so it's vital that you get them machined to fit the hub properly. With an oversize rotor spinning at 100mph worth of revolutions you really don't want it to be unbalanced!

Owen.

[cjhauser]

I ment lining them up to drill. If you can do it by feel... That just sounded a bit dodgy to me. I think the best way is if there was a printable guide with all the 5x and 4x hole centers marked. So you can mark the rotor out then just lock it in the drill press and drill away.
I know it will be absolutly vital to have it centered/balanced on the car. Its 7kg spinning out there. It would cause nasty a shake like a tire out of balance.

[jon_st205]

Isn't the 4Runner just a Hilux Surf? Of which there are loads in the UK, jap imports. They're always being broken up for parts when the 2.4TD cheese head gasket goes.

Jon

[cjhauser]

I know the pickup was called the Hilux over there..... Here it did not have a name untill 95 before that we called it the pickup. But I do know when I lived in Italy there were loads of land rovers. They mite have a similar brake. The seal kit crosses to that and a few lexus.
Any way I used the brakes from a 91-95. After 95 they got the same brake as the Tacoma.
I thought that 4runners were sold there. They are made in japan. So may have been called a hilux something. The tocoma is made in the usa so it makes sents there would not be many tocomas there.

[keri-WMS]

I bought a pair of these calipers a few years ago when I was doing the first WMS kits for the AW11 - I wanted to know if it would bolt up etc. I didn't use it for these reasons:

1 - It didn't bolt up, so the WMS ones made more sense (for me).
2 - The piston area was HUGE and that makes getting the balance difficult. In fact from memory it has the record for piston area in an OEM caliper I've owned!!!
3 - The things are also the heaviest calipers I've ever owned, with the exception of the Jag XRJ 4-pots (think in terms a 1ft long Jag-style cast iron beast).
4 - Lack of support for performance pads.

Hope that helps, just though it worth mentioning that I tried these and gave up.