I am learning things every day sadly knowledge can sometimes be costly!

If you can wade thru my lengthy post my questions are at the end.

I pulled the trigger on upgrading my front brakes to 13's to resolve the original size issue I had. I went with ssbc 13' rotors and their caliper bracket so I could keep my existing SSBC calipers. They were very helpful and I was stoked when the new parts arrived.

Well we mounted the new parts and everything went on smooth, that is until we we to mount the wheels. :eek:

The calipers were hitting the outer rim on my 17' Coy's c5 wheels. I have learned the hard way that there are Reverse Mount wheels out there and that Coys is one of them.

So I loaded up the studs with washers etc... to see how far out the wheel would need to be spaced to clear the back lip. I would need a 1' spacer and thats not going to work for me, it would push that front tire out to the fender lip edge.

I took the SSBC caliper apart (3 part caliper) and machined off 1/2 an inch off the outer/front caliper part and put it all back together. I could not go back/down further as the bolt hole threads just became exposed and I also needed to leave at least 1/2 of metal for the bolts to keep some strength.

I then put a 1/2 spacer on the wheel and it will turn with out rubbing now, but I only have about a credit cards thickness between the caliper and outer rim.

Excuse my poor paint skills in the pix below, but this is what the caliper looked like and the colored lines are items i just described. The green lines are represent where the bolts run thru the calipers, the yellow line is where the caliper is pieced together, and lastly the black lines represent the area i milled out 1/2 down. I will try to take pix this weekend when i get back down to the garage.

Have I ruined the one caliper by taking off so much metal? I did not lessen the amount off material further back than where the ends of the bolts are.

If the caliper is not ruined just lightened a bit, will a credit card thickness be enough clearance for the rim/caliper?

I called the brake co and they are going to see if they have any calipers with less material that would resolve the issue and they are researching. They couldn't tell me that my clearance would work or not, which I understand from a legal perspective.

I don't know how thick your credit cards are, but mine measure about .75mm [.03"]. I wouldn't be very comfortable running that little clearance on anything but a trailer queen. As soon as you start pushing any car hard, everything moves more than you probably think it would. We typically recommend .100" to .120" clearance between the wheels and calipers/tie-rod ends/etc, however we've have had customers get away with .06" to .08" in certain applications. Almost without fail though, they were running stiffer spindles/hubs/calipers/forged wheels...basically everything, but they never had issues.

Since you're running a .500" spacer, why not just run a .540" to .580" spacer instead? Can you not afford the extra width or are you trying to stick to an off-the-shelf nominal thickness spacer?

Tobin
KORE3

Tobin,

At the moment I am torn between the 2 options, because I agree that slight space does not fill me with warm fuzzies.

1. get a new caliper to replace the milled down one and go with new wheels all around that are not reverse mounted.

2. find a new caliper/disc setup for the front that is under 7.5 inches from center to outer caliper that is a 13' disc.

The ssbc caliper brackets supposedly put the caliper in oem position, but I am out of my comfort zone in this area. I may give you guys @ Kore3 a call soon. I should of done that in the 1st place from what I have seen on here and your website, but let someone close to me's opinion guide my brake selection. I see where your c5/c6 325 mm front kit for short spindles is 7.75, which is .25 larger than the inside diam of my rim. So sadly either option I take is going to most likely cost me around 1k to resolve the issue and allow me to run 13's up front, since I have 13's out back also.