Baer brakes = INCREDIBLE stopping power!

[Aurora40]

In fact, they work so well, I can't move the car out of the garage! Woohoo!

I got their 6-piston kit that uses the stock rotors and C5 pads. As they aren't a floating caliper, you have to shim them to get them centered. I have a fairly cheap caliper (the measuring device) but figured it would work ok, or at least get it close. However, I could have had the best one in the world, it wouldn't matter.

The directions say to tighten it all up slightly, but not hard because you'll have to take it apart. So I shim it up 'til the gauge says they are centered. But when you finally torque it down, the shims compress a lot more than they had been. It's off by a visually obvious amount now. The short side still has enough room for the pad to withdraw, but not much more than that.

Really it's irrelevant though, as I put on every shim they included. So there's not much else I can do anyway. That's 1/8" of shim. Considering the bracket is specifically for the C4, I'm a little surprised it needs that much (and more).

For some reason once the brake line is hooked up, the pistons want to just slowly extend. So once I got the caliper on once, I couldn't get it off again. I had to loosen the banjo bolt which, considering the copper washers are a one-time-use thing, is probably a bad idea. Then I pressed the pistons back by hand.

Now it's all on the car, and I thought I could at least take it around the neighborhood to make sure the pedal felt firm, the brakes worked, etc. But I can't move the car out of the garage. They are either clamping too hard, or it's because the pad surface is larger and so it's on a rotor area that isn't polished/smooth.

To be fair, it perhaps would go smoother if I had new rotors as there wouldn't be any rough/rusty areas on it. I imagine it would make the spacing measurements more accurate too, since the rotor surface on the edge may not be even all the way around anymore.

Sometimes I wonder if God made me interested in cars as some kind of a practical joke...