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My wheels are on and I'm going through the process of adjusting everything, and I noticed a small raised area on the outer side of the front brake calipers that protrudes roughly 3 to 5mm.
That slightly raised bump you see in the picture is giving me hell, in that - my 8mm spacers literally gives me "a sheet of paper's worth" space between the inner spoke and that raised bump, but I need for the wheels to sit "the thickness of that raised bump" more into the wheel-well.
In other words, if the outer surface of the brake calipers were flat without that raised bump I'd be better.
I still have plenty of clearance between the rear sides of the wheels, and the shock and I could come back further, but the brake calipers are hanging me up.
So, I'm thinking I could possibly take a grinder to that little sucker and flatten it to the surface of the caliper, or is it a dished channel of some sort and would I destroy the caliper in the process?
The other option is to possibly put a set of thinner front calipers on, which leads me to my main question.
Is there an aftermarket (or another Mercedes model) brake caliper that's a bit thinner that would fit on the 1990's R129's? (mine is a 1997)
If there are thinner brake calipers that bolt right on without a ton of modifications I'd be golden.
If not, fair enough, I'll have to make what I have work, but if there was a slightly thinner front caliper available or if I could flatten out that raised bump it would allow me to set the front wheels exactly where I need for them to be.
So I went out and purchased a grinder from Harbor Freight along with some grinding discs and ground down the raised bump on the face of the caliper.
Once that was ground down I kept going until most of the stamped numbers were almost invisible (as I figured going until I could no longer see them was far enough).
It worked like a charm, I was able to put the 5mm spacer on and have the clearance I needed between the backside of the wheel spoke and the caliper.
The space between them isn't much thicker than a sheet of paper mind you, but I do have clearance, it's enough, and that's all that matters.
I'll do the other side today now that I know it'll work.
I don't anticipate any rubbing issues, as even under flex & stress in hard turns or over rough roads & potholes the clearance component (between the wheel & caliper) won't change.
I wanted to post this follow up in case anybody in the future runs into this problem and needed to know how to overcome these clearance issues.
With a 1997, moving up to the OEM 99+ front brake setup gets you the bigger rotors and Brembo calipers.
They do cost more than the grinder though, but they stop better.
Hopefully, your newer rims are at least 17 inches in diameter.
How about a photo of the new wheels?
The wheels are Rotiform 5 spokes, 18 inches, and yes, the brake calipers are way more expensive than the grinder from Harbor Freight.......
Here are some initial pics when I was test fitting everything with different size spacers to get the "look" I wanted.
I wound up with 12mm spacers in the rear, and 5mm spacers in the front.
Wheel dimensions are:
Rear: 18 x 9.5 ET: 14
Front: 18 x 8.5 ET: 20
The pics aren't very good because the garage is small with poor lighting but once everything is finished I'll post better pics of the car outside.
In these pics you can see that the front wheel just sticks out way too far and I had to bring it back in, I've also lowered the coil-overs a bit since this pic was taken so the fender / wheel gap is less. I haven't taken a picture of what I did yesterday with the grinder and the 5mm spacer.
This is the rear with 10mm spacers but now I have 12mm spacers which brings the wheels right where I want them, again, I'll post finalized pics when it's all done, these were all preliminary fitment pics.
I can easily get the rear wheels inboard of the fender, but even if I could eliminate the 5mm spacers up front, the best I could do would be to get the wheels flush with the fenders. (but not inboard)
I have Ceika coil-overs all the way around and I can easily dial in enough lift to keep the tops of the wheels from hitting the fenders. (even over bumps)
I'm fine with the face of the wheels being slightly beyond the lips of the fenders, and I definitely plan on dialing in enough lift to keep them from hitting & rubbing.
If there's anything else I should be aware of, I'd love to hear it.
Keep in mind this car will be a Sunday driver on relatively smooth straight roads, I won't be doing any canyon carving or racing with it.
06-25-2021, 03:51 PM
