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Thread: W124 4 piston front brakes on w202?

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    Junior Member White C Komp's Avatar
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    W124 4 piston front brakes on w202?

    I have a pair for 4 pot front calipers of my old 94 e320 coupe. I was wondering if anyone has ever tried to put them on the 202s? If not then when I have times after I finish the intercooler upgrade, I'll try and see for myself and I'll post up. If not ill pot to go with the c32 or 43.

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    I have a pair of C36 4-piston calipers if you want. $75

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    Junior Member White C Komp's Avatar
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    Damn remo, you have everything! If I can't match up the brakes with the 124 this week, I definitely pick it up by the end if the week! I had honda's, acura's, Lexus to Nissan. I do everything myself because I was brought up this way. My dad owning a junkyard to my brothers bein into cars. I piece my own turbo kit together and installing it. It always feel better when it's done by yourself. I'll post a pic of my 2000 SI with an integra ls turbo motor soon.

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    Junior Member White C Komp's Avatar
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    Sorry for my post, I've been drinking. Lol. But I've put supra/sc coils on and ls400 and it worked out with few tweaks. Even Tanabe message me before about it. They were right about having higher spring rates due to the weight from is to ls(second 92 ls400). I'm not cheap. I try different options for the price cuz I have connections, just an FYI. I'll let you guys know! Thanks.

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    Junior Member White C Komp's Avatar
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    Update with some good news. The calipers bolt up! But I'm gonna check to see if the offset is fine later today. Here's 2 pics with it on a spare knuckle I have. The disc on the w124 are 295mm and mines are 288mm. That's a 7mm but actually 3.5mm on both sides of the disc. So I might be about to get away with using the c230 disc as long as the pad doesn't go over the edge of the disc.

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    Senior Member Dearlove's Avatar
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    yeah they fit, the only thing is the piston size is the wrong way around

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    Junior Member White C Komp's Avatar
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    Dear love, what do you mean by the wrong way around?

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    Senior Member Dearlove's Avatar
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    so because on the w124/201/129 the brakes are mounted on the trailing side of the wheel they have their leading (or maybe trailing) piston slightly bigger, so when mounted on a 202 you have to mount them on the opposite wheel which makes it the wrong way around.

    if you're just doing them for looks you have nothing to worry about

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    Quote Originally Posted by Dearlove View Post
    so because on the w124/201/129 the brakes are mounted on the trailing side of the wheel they have their leading (or maybe trailing) piston slightly bigger, so when mounted on a 202 you have to mount them on the opposite wheel which makes it the wrong way around.

    if you're just doing them for looks you have nothing to worry about
    what do you mean by not worrying if they are for looks only?
    he has to use the calipers for braking.
    i will do this mod by next year fitting my w203 c55 amg calipers on my c43, i have to put them the same way white c komp is doing his stuff

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    Junior Member White C Komp's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Dearlove View Post
    so because on the w124/201/129 the brakes are mounted on the trailing side of the wheel they have their leading (or maybe trailing) piston slightly bigger, so when mounted on a 202 you have to mount them on the opposite wheel which makes it the wrong way around.

    if you're just doing them for looks you have nothing to worry about

    I see what you're talking about now. I know that I have to use the caliper on the opposite side to have the brake line pointed the right way. I wasn't aware that the calipers had to face a certain way. But do you think it really affects the braking negatively?

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    Hey remolexi you still got the 4pot calipers?

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    Senior Member Dearlove's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by kowalski View Post
    what do you mean by not worrying if they are for looks only?
    he has to use the calipers for braking.
    i will do this mod by next year fitting my w203 c55 amg calipers on my c43, i have to put them the same way white c komp is doing his stuff
    :0 omg i had no idea!! haha, jut pulling the piss

    They'll still stop the car fine, just if you were to use them for the track you'd get some weird pad wear

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    Quote Originally Posted by kowalski View Post
    what do you mean by not worrying if they are for looks only?
    he has to use the calipers for braking.
    i will do this mod by next year fitting my w203 c55 amg calipers on my c43, i have to put them the same way white c komp is doing his stuff
    What he means is if you are only using them for daily commuting and not for extreme racing app;ications, the piston clocking is not so important as it would be under constant extreme heat and pressure slowings on a 3 min interval race curcuit.

    The leading pistons are smaller because the front entrance of the rotor direction into the caliper has the most clamping force. What happens in racing conditions is the front half of the pad will wear faster then the back half of the pad. THus, a varied sized piston combination allows for less force ont he leading edge and more ont he trailing edge to compensate= it all equated to an even brake pad wear surface (under extreme heat and force stopping conditions.)

    Now on your average street car, you will never get your binders hot enough, nor with prolonged heat and pressure use as you would ever get in one lap at SPA for instance. You would exert about on average 10% of the abuse a race pad will see under rae conditoons. Most of your stops would be about 2% and the ocational sirited driving may once in a while yield 40%. It woudl all average back down and you would still get almost completely even pad wear regardless because of daily street use type conditions.

    THe best other analogy I can give you is like driving very hard on new tires and wearing off about 40% of the outside edge of the tire with 20 autox runs. You then drive on those tires with normal street use for the next 10,000 miles and the outer edge will not even touch the ground- thus the midlle and inside treads will wear until...tada!!!..the tire tread is even again across the surface. Pad volume (surfce area) is not the same as trip width- though everyone thinks so...it is not. Pad friction works off of adherent friction which is irrelevant of pad length . Pad size is only for longevity, not stopping power.

    I could go on much more, but that is enough for answering the question. The pistons being reversed will work about 70 % of what they would last duration wise in race conditions, but for your street use they would make the pad last about 95% or better than if they were in the correct clocked position. In other words- If youa re not tracking the car for long durations then do not worry about it. They will work fine.

    Based on the bleeder position, it could be possible to switch sides with the calipers and put the left on rightm and the right on left if you have muclitple beelder positions avbailiable.I am not familiar with those calipers.

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    doesn't wrong piston orientation affect hard braking in high speed street driving?
    if there's a queue of cars waiting for green light on freeway/highway, you're driving fast and need to hit the brakes hard not to cause a rear end crash for the cars infront of yoy, these calipers might not handle the extreme pressure of hard braking cos of wrong piston orientation?
    would there be a problem for dangerous situations, what do you think?

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    Nope, definately not. All it effects is pad taper upon wearing. Niraml soft braking over the duration of a normal street car brake pad life will even it out. It can have a slight effect on how much pressure can be applied until locking up. It can take away a little bit of pedal sweet spot, but most people can not use this anyways if cheap OEM pad compounds are used and at normal street temps.

    Piston size offsets in a caliper arrangement are strictly for pad wear to prevent taper under extreme conditions.

    Now using the wrong size caliper volume is much more a critical thing everyone should be worred about. If you start changing lets say a 4.2 total Sqinch front calipers matched to 2.85 total Sq inch rear calipers and you now put a 6.8sq in volume caliper on front while retaining the 2.85 rear- you then will have a bias problem with too much front brake torque 9or vica versa if done the other way.

    AAlso, if you drastically increase both front and rear total volumes and DO NOT increase the master cylinder volume,- then you can have a very long travel brake pedal and a potential loose of pedal as pads wear. Change brake configurtations with volume and pressure is FAR more dangerous then having different claiper piston sizs running in the wrong direction.I think anyone using this change is worrying about something they shold not..all the while not understanding the other real prblem of bias changes to the entire system.

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    Ill add a note on this exact subject" This very topic of bias and rotor size and/or caliper volume is the exact reason I came back into these boards to see if I could find some info from Trent (Dearlove) on his Ceika brake package and how ifs overall bias feels with the drastic changes on aftermarket parts. I want to see just how close Ceika's engineers developed a setup on paper for Trent and then how if will do in real world testing. I have built a few systems from scratch in my day and I know from experience you can not truely effectively nail it on paper. There are too many variables that need real world testing to fine tune. I came into here to pick his brain/data before I ultimately make my purchase choices- this kind of help would save on trail and error cost for the next of us to learn from...and so on.

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    hey vetruck, good to see you're onboard again.

    i'll probably change the factory master brake cylinder for an updated version when i change to w203 AMG calipers on my c43
    w202 c43 amg probably uses a MBC suitable for 2 piston calipers and w203 AMG cars uses a different MBC suitable for their 4 piston brembo calipers

    for brakepads, i'll will be using Akebono's euro ceramic pads, people say good things about these pads, they are rotor friendly and keeping the rims clean
    on my current c43 brakes i use Porterfield R4s street pads and they have been very nice keeping the rims clean and great braking without noisy squeeling

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    Thank you Kowalski.

    I had to look around real quick for some examples for you- best quick numbers I could come up with is just using Wilwoods website to explain a few things.
    1) the main thing you need to understand in choosing a caliper is that the # of piston in a caliper does not dictate it's size/volume. You can have a single piston caliper that has larger volume then a 6 piston caliper. It has to be matched to the size of car when relating to Volume. You have too little volume and the calipers can boil fluid and loose pedal. You have too large of volume and the brakes can be too touchy and loose feel.
    Here are two page ou can look at from WIlood. Scrool down and you will see a single piston caliper with 4.45sq inches of piston volume, and then the next page where you see a 4 piston caliper with only 1.96sq inches of piston volume. More is not stronger. More is smoother function and generally a larger pad area to dissipate heat transfer off the rotor surface.
    http://www.wilwood.com/Calipers/Cali...spx?subname=GM Single Piston
    http://www.wilwood.com/Calipers/Cali...subname=Forged Superlite 4R Radial Mount.

    2)Watch out changing a MC from another type of model of vehicle. You are changing pedal position, leverage, AND volume of that MC's intended function.
    3) you want to retain calipers with very close piston volume as to what you are currently running. You can even go just a tad smaller in piston size to make for a slightly firmer brake pedal while using the OEM MC. This give a better feel. Less assist, and a slightly shorter throw of pedal travel- but you have to press it harder which makes for easier modulation. it will feel like lees booster assist and more analog feel.

    You want to make slight changes based on which end of the car needs increased leverage. If the rear brakes are week and the car currently stands on it's nose, then you want to slightly increase the rear caliper piston volume size or slightly decrease front size. Just keep the verall system close to wat is OEM in piston volume...no matter how many or few pistons you use.

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    Here is another inportant note to understanding caliper pistons and pad configuration. How the piston pushes on the back of the pad is important to wear of the pad surface. The size of the piston area/volume is the overall pressure or force the caliper can exert. Note that on a single piston caliper (lets say the pad is 2"x6" long on both examples I am about to give) the single piston will put force on about 3" of the enter of the pad length. The center section of the pad under extreme force use will press against the rotor harder then the ends will and created more heat in this center area- this leads to centralized glazing of the pad and the entire length of the pad is less effective to dissipate heat. The pad wears unevenly and the brakes can fade due to centralized glazing of the pressure area on the pad length.
    Now with a 6 piston caliper with the same sized 2"x6" pad, three smaller pistons all equalling the same area/volume of the single piston caliper- this one will exert pressure evenly across the entire 6" length of the backing plate of the pad, thus forcing more envenly distributed pressure across the pad to dissipate heat from the rotor and a) keep pad temps down and sitributed evenly rather then hotspotting a smaller section of its length, while also b) making for more even wear for longevity.

    So back to the question of using the wrong clocking of piston sizes? You can now start to understand how normal pressure will not make a difference in pad wear and stopping power if the pad is not heating up to extreme temps. It will only give up just a very small amount of performance when used on occational hard stops because the wear will not be in there like in an extreme racing condition. Use that caliper in high heat conditions and you will glaze that leading edge of the pads with the calipers clocked wrong, but very hard to do (almost impossible) with standard spirited street driving.

    If you lok at it this way, a wrong tapered piston caliper is still better distrbuting heat and pressure across more of the pad length then the single piston is. If a pad is 6" long, the single piston will do apros 3" centered pressure, the correct direction dual piston will do 5" length (2.5" left and right of center) and the wrong piston clocking will do 5" length also but 3" left and 2" right of center/ When extreme hard pressed on numerous continual braking zone, the last one will taper wear more on the left then right of center in the caliper(but is still better diapating then the single piston one could ever do.
    Last edited by Vetruck; 08-24-2014 at 11:34 PM.

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    on mb-world forum, i have another buddy who changed his MC on his c43/c55 to better fit his big brake kit
    he used the MC from an SL600 R129 for his BBK
    he highly recommends fitting a different MC if i change to 4 piston calipers from c32/c55 cars

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    Senior Member Dearlove's Avatar
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    MC size is probably my biggest concern for my bbk at the moment, but for all i know it could be fine, still waiting on spacers so i can fit my bloody wheels

    oh and this is what happens when you do a track day on incorrect pads/rotors


    they turn into something resembling angle grinders, although the car was still pulling up fine. It wasnt until the very end of the night did they start to get a bit of fade.
    In retrospect upgrading the pads and rotors is probably all i needed.

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    Senior Member Dearlove's Avatar
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    oh and another thing i forgot.
    Pretty sure you can split those callipers apart and reasemble them backwards so the piston's will be corect

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    Quote Originally Posted by Dearlove View Post
    oh and another thing i forgot.
    Pretty sure you can split those callipers apart and reasemble them backwards so the piston's will be corect

    yes, this can be done, i've seen it done on mbworld forum
    only downside is that you will probably ruin the painting and probably cause some dents on caliper housing?

    i will not do any track runs with my car.
    only rapid highway driving, w203 calipers/rotors/pads will probably be ok for this type of driving

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    Quote Originally Posted by Vetruck View Post
    Here is another inportant note to understanding caliper pistons and pad configuration. How the piston pushes on the back of the pad is important to wear of the pad surface. The size of the piston area/volume is the overall pressure or force the caliper can exert. Note that on a single piston caliper (lets say the pad is 2"x6" long on both examples I am about to give) the single piston will put force on about 3" of the enter of the pad length. The center section of the pad under extreme force use will press against the rotor harder then the ends will and created more heat in this center area- this leads to centralized glazing of the pad and the entire length of the pad is less effective to dissipate heat. The pad wears unevenly and the brakes can fade due to centralized glazing of the pressure area on the pad length.
    Now with a 6 piston caliper with the same sized 2"x6" pad, three smaller pistons all equalling the same area/volume of the single piston caliper- this one will exert pressure evenly across the entire 6" length of the backing plate of the pad, thus forcing more envenly distributed pressure across the pad to dissipate heat from the rotor and a) keep pad temps down and sitributed evenly rather then hotspotting a smaller section of its length, while also b) making for more even wear for longevity.

    So back to the question of using the wrong clocking of piston sizes? You can now start to understand how normal pressure will not make a difference in pad wear and stopping power if the pad is not heating up to extreme temps. It will only give up just a very small amount of performance when used on occational hard stops because the wear will not be in there like in an extreme racing condition. Use that caliper in high heat conditions and you will glaze that leading edge of the pads with the calipers clocked wrong, but very hard to do (almost impossible) with standard spirited street driving.

    If you lok at it this way, a wrong tapered piston caliper is still better distrbuting heat and pressure across more of the pad length then the single piston is. If a pad is 6" long, the single piston will do apros 3" centered pressure, the correct direction dual piston will do 5" length (2.5" left and right of center) and the wrong piston clocking will do 5" length also but 3" left and 2" right of center/ When extreme hard pressed on numerous continual braking zone, the last one will taper wear more on the left then right of center in the caliper(but is still better diapating then the single piston one could ever do.
    this was a good write up, thanks
    in spirited street driving brakes will never heat up and fading will never occure compared to a track run where rotors and pads glows from strong heat after a few laps, there is nothing for me to worry about when doing this brake modification on my car.

    cheers

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