So how many of you have thought or tried or pulled off the removal of the drum brakes and installed the disc brakes from one of the many choices of Rabbit or Scirroco?
I was able to find a set of rotors and calipers on line from a guy in CA and he sent them to me. They were in really nice shape and with a bit of cleaning and checking I proceeded to remove the drums and put on the discs. What I bought contained the needed hubs, rotors and calipers along with the little flex hoses on the calipers. What didn't come with that stuff was the ebrake cables. That was a rub! But places sell those, Right.
This was the beginning of a couple of week project for me. I do not have a garage, I live on the coast of Oregon, and it was raining cats, dogs and slugs for most of the month of Dec. I barely got this far without getting soaked.
I did my homework and knew that I would need different ebrake cables and I went to Parts Place Inc and specifically told them what I was doing and that I would need their longer cables that they mention on their site when you read the disc brake conversion kit stuff they sell. Well long story short, the cables they swear will work are only 71 inches in total length. That leaves you about two inches short of getting the ball of the cable on the ebrake engagement lever on the caliper. It also leaves you about the same amount of outer cable short of getting the cable to the caliper at all.
So back to the Utube videos I went to see if there was a solution there. I happened across a guy from the UK talking about doing a disc conversion on a Rabbit or Cabriolet. He mentioned a source of where he got some of the parts he was using so I decided to go to them and see if they had longer cables that would do the job.
Well it turns out that according to them there are none. But don't dismay. They made an adapter that allows you to use your existing pickup ebrake cables on the new disc calipers.
I figured out that you could do that with a short piece of flexible copper pipe, the 1/2 inch size stuff. That goes just perfect over the end of your cable on the one end and allows the spring covered cable and swaged end to slide inside the pipe. So noting the look of that adapter I decided to make my own from local parts.
This is what they sell.
I found that by using the 1/2 inch flexible pipe I could put on a 1/2 inch shaft collar with just a bit of file work to enlarge the hole on the collar. It has a set screw on it and that allows it to stay snug to the pipe. That takes up the slack on the inner cable and allows you to connect the cable to the engagement lever and still have the push back of the spring to keep the lever and the ebrake lever in place once all is released.
This is my final product. I extended the pipe well passed the bracket as I didn't want it coming out once it was released. I set my first pipe a bit short like the product the UK folks can use but I noticed the pipe would drop out of the bracket once I pulled up on the brake lever and released it. I just had to undo that collar set screw and move it a little and all was good.
So for all of those driving around with no ebrake on their converted discs you now can fix that. Get the standard ebrake cable, yes the one you took off the drums, the one in the parts stash box and install it. Ii won't take you weeks to do this and you will not have to keep that brick in the passenger floorboard for when you park on a steep hill. That is what I was thinking I would be doing until I figured out the outer cable extension.
Finding the little adapter for sale made it all the simpler for me to change what I had going and make a proper fit for the cable to lever match.
Hope this helps some of you, I didn't find many how-tos on the net and most were lacking the brake final part. They either threw up their hands and said they would drive without an emergency brake or figured it out later and never posted what they did.
Topic: Caddy Disc Brake Conversion (Read 30231 times)
