Rover 2000 Front Brake Upgrade?

302Rover

302Rover

Member
As noted in my recent post on the Members Projects Section, I have installed a Jaguar XJS differential and brakes in my Rover 2000TC. Now I would like to increase the size of the front brakes, hopefully via some sort of bolt in conversion. I recall reading that the 3500S front 3 pot calipers and rotors are a direct swap but here in the US Rover parts are becoming very hard to source so I'm looking for something more readily available.

Simon Owen has used calipers from an early Jaguar XJ6 along with Range Rover Defender rotors but tells me that some machining is required on the hubs to make the rotors fit. Does anyone know of any direct swaps that will result in greater piston area and hopefully pad area?

Oh, and regarding the Rover 3500S 3 pot calipers, can someone tell me the piston diameters?

Cheers,
Tom
 
The only brake upgrade you could do without machining work would be the swop to 3500S 3 pot front brakes. Cars do exist in breakers yards in the US and the components you need are extremely unlikely to be wanted by any of the running cars in the US. The simplest way of obtaining these parts is just to ask for the front vertical legs complete. The legs themselves are common with the 4 cylinder, but the V8 has different front hubs and discs running on the same taper stubs and of course the calipers and the backplates or stoneguards. All you actually really need are the hub and disc assemblies and stoneguards, as the calipers are common with a number of cars including E type Jaguar. But I can't see a breakers yard being able to supply those components separately in an organised manner!

Given a standard 3500 set up certain other upgrades become possible. Because Jag owners like to race their E Types, you can get both GreenStuff and RedStuff pads for the three pot caliper. If you then micro-groove the disc to allow operation of these Kevlar pads (they generate gasses under the pads which need to be let out, grooving is by far the most effective way of doing this) you will have a very effective brake indeed.

My car goes to the next level, which is to substitute vented discs within the 3500 three pot calipers (widened to suit with a spacer). The discs used are UK Ford Transit with a limited amount of machining, including of course the micro-grooving. I have GreenStuff pads in mine and there is no doubt that they are the best brakes I have ever driven on all bar a mates ceramic disc-ed Porsche. To such an extent that I really need to upgrade my rear brakes to match.

Simon's conversion is really an equivalent conversion to this, although others have suggested to me that the 4 pot Jag calipers are not such an upgrade on the 3 pot calipers as might be supposed, their main advantage being to more readily facilitate split braking circuits.

I think I'd start by trying fairly hard to source the V8 type legs in the US first and go down the solid discs with microgroove and GreenStuff pads route first. If you find you are getting brake fade with that set up, well maybe we need to send you a spacer for the calipers and a set of vented discs out to the US. Shouldn't be too expensive if limited solely to that.

Chris
 
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