Saab 99 / 900 front hubs / wheel bearing question?

[DeLorean]

Well SwedeSport, If you feel like dropping by and sorting this out for me, I'd appreciate it. I am about to give up and pull these off and update to 88+ brakes that function properly.

[Luke]

Never really had major issues with these brakes, and have probably logged 1/2 million miles of so on lots of different cars with them, after many years in the salt the parking brake mechanism will seize up, and they always clunk of course, but other than that they work just fine for street use.

[nutcase]

I hate these calipers. I have yet to see a single one that worked properly, or a car that stopped well with them... am I wrong?

On my 99T (admitedly with no back seat, trim panels or boot floor or spare so light at the back) I braked from 90 - 0 so quickly the back lifted enough for the rear tyres to screech when it came back down again and that was with DOT 5 silicone (allegedly spongy!) brake fluid.

Differences between front handbrake 81- and vented front handbrake are IIRC:

Yoke
Casting
Pads
Retaining U pin
Discs (duh!)
Hub

[SwedeSport]

If I didn't already have commitments for my day I would drive up and look at it.

you can take a grinder to the pad and knock some thickness off it. Might take a while till they seat though.

did you screw the self adjusters all the way in?

[DeLorean]

Well I have about 6 calipers that fit vented rotors, 2 of which were supposedly rebuilt "properly", I can't get any of them to turn. This is with the correct snap on tool. they turn a bit, move a little and get really tight the tool blasts off the piston.

I think what I have here is just broken calipers and more broken calipers. I know the piston needs to be all the way in for the pads to fit in there...

I guess I could order some more broken "rebuilt" calipers from rock auto? I think I'm going to cut my losses and I'll be going with the wilwood front calipers on this. I don't need to worry about a parking brake, and that never really works well on these anyway...

[DeLorean]

Waiting on calipers, and it should be good to roll...

[SwedeSport]

Did you just buy new stock ones, or did you spring for wilwoods?

[DeLorean]

If I could buy actual new stock ones, I would have bought those... but they only sell shit re-manufactured calipers now that don't function properly, so I bought the wilwoods. I figured if I was going to have a caliper that didn't have a parking brake that worked very well... I may as well have one that the parking brake does not work at all, but will have a good functioning primary brake

[DeLorean]

Calipers are on. Would have been rolling today, but they sent me one defective brake line - the crimp is obviously bad, and it leaks fluid. I'll have a few pictures later.

[tweek's Turbos]

Delo,

Where do you get willwoods and would they work on my 87 vented hubs?

[Luke]

The Wilwoods work great on the early vented rotor setups. Just order them for the .81 rotor width. I've run that exact setup on a couple different cars, also Jordan and Mike (rallyho) run them on their race cars, and Per from GRM ran then on their project rally car as well.

[DeLorean]

Delo,

Where do you get willwoods and would they work on my 87 vented hubs?

Yes, they work on those- Talk to Paul, he can give you the specs of the ones we used.

The car is up and running now, and it stops well. Gunna pop a fresh valve cover gasket on there, and drive it around today and run the brakes in.

[paulh]

Yes, seems to work good, havent gotten a chance to really get them bedded in yet, but the balance seems decent for now. I went with the 1.38" piston ones since the 1.60's were going to take several weeks to get here, and the 1.38 is actually only about 15% less surface area than stock. Seems to work good, but pedal effort is a little high, maybe at some point we'll replumb the lines, get a proportioning valve in there and go to the larger piston units, but for a totally stock line setup this seems to work pretty good.

Paul

[firedome]

Do you still have the new 99 rotors? Are they non-Asian made Brembo or the like? I assume they'd fit a '77 99GL? Please eMail me direct if you have them still to:
firesweep "at" verizon "dot" net
thanks
RogerA
Bingahmton NY