A little back story. Almost 9 years ago I looked into a brake upgrade for my original 80 series truck. The basic idea was to put together an upgrade using stock components sourced from other Toyota vehicles.
The main reason for this, is I wanted readily available parts should I need to service the system. And I wanted to retain the 16" rims and not have to buy new rims and tires which would add to the cost of the upgrade.
The first challenge was to identify a caliper that had larger pistons, would bolt to the knuckle and have a banjo style hose connection at the caliper while still allowing a 16" rim to fit. Believe it or not this was the easy part.
I sourced some junk yard calipers for mocking up the rotor I would need and this is where things got ugly. While these calipers required the same thickness of rotor it also needed a larger diameter rotor and a rotor with a larger pad surface area along with a different offset. All this meant that the caliper would not bolt to the knuckle if the rotor was in place and even if I shimmed the rotor to the correct offset the rotor's diameter was too small and the pads would hang over the rotors edge and still be bigger than the pad area.
At this point I would need a custom rotor and I did look into it. There were companies that offered that service as well a few startups that had rotor hat combinations. The rotor hat combination was promising but there was nothing for the 80. No rotor or hat for what I was trying to do. So the only option was a custom rotor and cost set aside, not having a rotor supply readily available was a non starter. Rotors are a wear item and really needs the backing of a large company and not some wingnut in his garage.
So all the hardware and bits and pieces were placed in a box on a shelf in my garage and all the online info was copied into a "brake upgrade" folder in my Projects drive and the concept was put to rest.
Then 8 months ago while digging up some info to answer a question for a customer my eye happened to focus on that brake upgrade folder, and I wondered...
The main reason for this, is I wanted readily available parts should I need to service the system. And I wanted to retain the 16" rims and not have to buy new rims and tires which would add to the cost of the upgrade.
The first challenge was to identify a caliper that had larger pistons, would bolt to the knuckle and have a banjo style hose connection at the caliper while still allowing a 16" rim to fit. Believe it or not this was the easy part.
I sourced some junk yard calipers for mocking up the rotor I would need and this is where things got ugly. While these calipers required the same thickness of rotor it also needed a larger diameter rotor and a rotor with a larger pad surface area along with a different offset. All this meant that the caliper would not bolt to the knuckle if the rotor was in place and even if I shimmed the rotor to the correct offset the rotor's diameter was too small and the pads would hang over the rotors edge and still be bigger than the pad area.
At this point I would need a custom rotor and I did look into it. There were companies that offered that service as well a few startups that had rotor hat combinations. The rotor hat combination was promising but there was nothing for the 80. No rotor or hat for what I was trying to do. So the only option was a custom rotor and cost set aside, not having a rotor supply readily available was a non starter. Rotors are a wear item and really needs the backing of a large company and not some wingnut in his garage.
So all the hardware and bits and pieces were placed in a box on a shelf in my garage and all the online info was copied into a "brake upgrade" folder in my Projects drive and the concept was put to rest.
Then 8 months ago while digging up some info to answer a question for a customer my eye happened to focus on that brake upgrade folder, and I wondered...
