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      06-28-2020, 11:02 AM   #6
maupineda
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Drives: E86 Z4MC
Join Date: Jul 2012
Location: Detroit, MI

iTrader: (3)

I have completed the install of the fronts... and so far so good. the installation is not too difficult but you do need to tweak some things

1. The knuckle, being cast, may require some filing to avoid clearance issues with the bracket, Instead of filing anything I mounted the bracket to the knuckle and started tightening, the bracket being aluminum (soft) could be driven to be fully seated by the fasteners making the knuckle and the bracket to notch one another just fine (I hope this makes sense). Now, the bracket does need about 1mm of spacing to the knuckle, so I removed the bracket, added the spacers, and tightened it back, at this point the notches created by forcing the two parts together provided actual clearance between the two parts with the spacer in place. This was only an issue on the driver side, the passenger side was perfect, but again, castings are not identical if not machined. More details the spacers on point 3.

2. The lines, I had bought Z4M specific lines from ECS, and they did not fit, they are tad shorter than the OE rubber ones, which made the problem even worse, the OE hoses would fit, but I did not want to have stress on the lines so I had to get another set, this time around I went to Rally Road to match the rears (blue in colour ). These were perhaps longer than ideal, but they can be made routed rather well with zero clearance or contact issues.

(No photos of the above)

3. The calliper is designed for a 25mm rotors, ours, being 28mm, fit, but it is tight. As mentioned already I needed a small spacer between the bracket and the knuckle, which you can see in some of the photos below. with those rotors are pretty much in the middle relative to the calliper ditch. These spacers are nothing but washers (20mm OD, 10.8mm ID, 0.8mm thick)

The two photos below show the little spacing between the calliper and the rotor with the washer in place

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Below you can see the thin spacer, I was lucky that my rally road kit came with 0.8mm thick washers (measured with digital callipers) so they did the trick perfectly. without these, I don't know what I would have done, as the ones in Home Depot are 1.5mm, which would of not work as is and I would have had to thin them out. Without the spacers, the calliper binds to the rotor so these are a must, or they were in my case. Both sides were exactly the same so it was not something unique to one side of the car, I think by design these brackets missed that small detail

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Last edited by maupineda; 06-28-2020 at 02:54 PM..
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