I'm not doing it, but I am replacing a bad passenger caliper on my 1.6 braked car. And I have several 1.8 calipers and brackets laying around. So I grabbed on of the 1.8 ones marked R and pulled the bracket off so I could reuse the 1.6 bracket. Everything is fine, until... the slider pin bolt things are opposite. Oops. Doing a little reading, apparently when swapping to 1.8 brakes, you need to swap the sides the calipers are on, so the slider pins are oriented correctly. No problem. What I don't understand, is since you can use the same calipers for 1.6 or 1.8 brakes, why not leave the calipers alone and install the brackets on the "wrong" side of the car, and not have to swap the calipers and all the bleeding of fluid and all that fun stuff? In the end, for my car, I'm just buying a pair of 94+ reman calipers and going to use my 1.6 brackets, since the 1.6 calipers are no where to be found locally.
Anecdotes aren't data... But...
Mazda did something similar with the RX-7s. The '86-91 single piston calipers had the same piston bore size and caliper pin setup as '81-85 12A calipers. So you can interchange '86-91 and '81-85 calipers, aside from one small difference with the bolt-in caliper pin, and I cannot remember if the pin has to match the caliper or the carrier.
Anyway. Have a car with '86 brakes. Had a caliper failure, had a 12A caliper sitting around, slammed it in, everything was groovy. Went to go buy new pads, because I had over 100k miles on the brake pads that I reused from the 160k mile parts car I got the brakes from, and they were getting worn.
The calipers also have different depth. The new pads, to fit the carriers, were too thick for the early caliper to slide over. I will need to file the pads down so the caliper can fit over them. Or buy the correct caliper, I suppose.
In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :
it is weird. Allegedly you switch caliper sides, but I don't see why you couldn't just switch the brackets
Because you're reading information from people who have learned what they know from reading forum posts and being told stuff by other people and they've never done it or they just followed some Youtube "tutorial" from someone who heard about this from someone else and never actually thought about it. The cult of the amateur several layers deep, compounded by a belief by younger owners that old information is somehow inaccurate because it's not new.
You can totally swap the brackets. If you turn to this project in your copy of "Mazda Miata Performance Projects", you'll see the advice to swap the brackets. But that's an 18 year old print book written by a pro, and who reads print books today?
In reply to Keith Tanner :
Keith your absolutely right! I actually bought your books as they came out, so they have been on my shelf for the better part of two decades! Probably why I didn't even think to look. In the end, I bought reman 94+ calipers for both sides. Then I swapped the 1.6 brackets left to right. Basically a 1.6 swap, sort of lol. Even more funny is that the tub on this car is, in fact a 94, but I had used it to rebody a rusty 92, so the computer and brakes and dif are actually 1.6 stuff. But now it has a 1.8 engine swap. She's confusing!
This sounds like the kind of car that will completely befuddle a future owner :) Glad you got it sorted.
In reply to Keith Tanner :
Heck it's befuddling me! This spring will be 20 years together lol.
In reply to Keith Tanner :
check this out! I know the receipt is for a different book, I bought both on the same day, the road and track one had to be ordered in. 2004!
That's the first edition/printing! Collectors item.
Please correct the caster number in the alignment section from - to + :)
In reply to Keith Tanner :
I'll be sure to make the correction!
