Modifying brake caliper, legality

[zarnah]

Hi guys, been a bit of a lurker for a while on here. Have an 93 vitara that I was using as a farm vehicle untill it was unfortunately rolled, I have just bought a 95 V6 vitara and was planning on taking the 15 inch alloys and brand new hankook mt´s off the old one and putting them on the new one the new one will be used mainly for hunting but needs to be legal, wont be used on the farm! have run into a problem, being that the v6 seems to have bigger front brake discs and calipers and the 15s wont fit due to touching the brake caliper. I was wondering if its legal to get out the angle grinder and grind about 4 or 5mm off the corner of the brake caliper so they fit? its only the corner of it that touches and its a nice big thick part of the caliper body so i dont see it harming the integrity of the caliper by grinding the bit back that i need to. Will it be legal?

[T-Boon]

A lot of people grind the Nissan off of skyline 4 pots with no dramas, technically its proly not allowed or advisble, but i`m sure no-one will ever notice.

[zarnah]

yea I grinded the ¨subaru¨off a set of four-pots on my old project RS legacy a few years back but that was off the face of the caliper, I got a wof with them like that too, but lets just say the guy that did my wof´s back then used to surprise me (dropped off a surf I bought a few years back for a wof check so I could get a list of things to fix, I knew of a few allready.. was surprised when I picked it up and it had a new wof sticker.....) with the zuk caliper i need to grind a bit off the top of the caliper as it touches the inside of the rims as apposed to touching behind the spokes, if that makes any sense...

[kernels]

If you can machine off a tiny a mount and get the 15" rims to fit it would be a great solution, when I did mine I switched over a set of complete wheel hubs from a 16V here: http://www.andante.co.nz/blog/?p=13

Fitted some high performance brake pads and got it certified no problem. Been driving it like this for a few years, the brakes aren't like a sports-car, but work fine.

[Sadam_Husain]

to answer your legal question I'd put a pretty good guess the answer would be no and I was a wof inspecter that I'm not I'd probably fail a caliper thats had a grinder taken to it, having said that I've given the front calipers on one of my trucks a tickle up with the grinder but only the heatsink fins not the actual housings themselves. My other truck had he same problem with only the corners of the calipers fowling on the rim and I got away with 6mm spacers to get enough clearance so that may be an option with your truck to get them to fit without grinding anything up or modifying anything? If you do try some small spacers make sure your wheel studs are long enough and you get enough bite on the wheel nuts.

[BlakeJ]

is the one you rolled a lwb? if so just swap the brakes over from that. If its a lwb they will be vented discs and bigger than short wheel base and will be fine. saves the dodgyness of it all.

[zarnah]

yea rolled one was a lwb and so is the new one but the v6 one definately has larger brakes than the 1600, i like the idea of keeping the brakes if I can as I will use the truck for a lot of road work and towing etc,

[Taz]

Are the rims you're wanting to take off 16" or just a different offset? If they're 16" legally you can't swap to 15" anyway, and if they are 15" why not just swap the tyres to the rims that fit?

[BlakeJ]

nah the v6 uses 16" rims. The lwb 1600 brakes are still much better than the swb 1600 brakes, i dont think you would notice a huge difference going from the v6 to the 1600 brakes. People have had this issue many times before and i have never heard of anyone solving it by grinding the calipers. They just get 16" steelies. My advice if you want the 15" wheels and tyres would be to swap to the 1600 brakes which are still bigger than the swb ones and use vented discs unlike the swb ones. But he its your truck and your only asking for advice

[zarnah]

well... I did it, truck is going in to get new camchain and tensioner etc next week (is suffering from the common rattly camchain these things seem to be notorious for) then its wof time so fingers crossed. if they pick up on it I will just swap out the brakes as suggested