Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Brakes! we need them.

Once the amputation was over there had to be decisions made about which direction we would be able to go with the suspension, original, MR2 or aftermarket? After building a strut assembly and working it into the front suspension I realized it would not allow for the correct clearance for the driver and passenger seats.
What most people don't realize is that the driver is literally siting directly above the wheel in this car, there is no room for adaptation of struts into the drivers compartment.

Fortunately there was only a loss of $100.00 in parts and lots of labor to find this out. (Does anybody need a 86 mr2 front strut suspension with a 4" drop?)

Once I was forced to go back to using my brain, I realized that the the aluminum brake drum was actually riveted to the front spindle.






This is a unusual set up Fiat used to make the front end lighter which kept the car under 1600 lbs. Of course the original engine was putting out an eye splitting 26 horsepower. Not quite enough to kill the bugs hitting the windshield, only maiming them. This cruelty had to stop, and of course with the addition of the 4age motor the car needed to stop too.Once the front spindle was separated the next issue was to find a rotor set-up that would be adaptable to the control arm that would fit both a 14" rim and be hub centric on the spindle.
Once again the 87 MR2 steps in as a likely donor. The rotor was within 1/16 of an inch. I just happen to have a special tool from my woodworking days that I was able to shave the extra metal off the rotor.
The back of the rotor fit perfectly within less than a 1/16 of an inch so the hub fits snugly in the pocket of the rotor flush against the plate.

The next process entails creating a backer plate that will hold the Brake caliper on the rotor

1 comment:

Erik said...

You are a lot insane. It's wonderful.