87 Targa, Brakes DIY?

[dsscpa00]

I am new to Porsche but have experience doing brakes on Corvette, Acura and Infiniti cars. I have noodled around on the Pelican How-To's... Looking for opinions on the relative ease/difficulty of doing full brakes job on all four corners on my recently acquired 1987 Targa...

Thanks in advance
Dave

[Reiver]

Easy really and you'll recognize the basic system...straight forward deal. Replace all of the rubber lines...redo the caliper seals and check the pistons...mine were a bit discolored but not pitted so used a green pad and they have worked perfectly this last 40k miles.
Check your discs for thickness....you didn't say how many miles or what has been done but maybe a good time to redo front bearings too.

Just noted your location...I'm in Wickenburg.

[dsscpa00]

78k on the car but it has not moved a lot in the last 10 years. Rotors are rusty... If I am in there I will do the whole thing. New rotors, pads and lines for sure

Aye Wickenburg is pretty close by...

[Reiver]

Well if putting new rotors on check the bearings/races...re grease at least and check the seals. Do you have a Bentley's shop manual.....the way to go.

[dsscpa00]

Completed the project, ended up replacing the calipers with rebuilt units from Pelican. The pistons were frozen on the first old caliper I pulled off the car so I decided to punt on rebuilding them. New rotors, front wheel bearings, lines and pads. The parking brake is also new as the shoes were shot.

So the surprises were the calipers not being salvageable, the new calipers coming with two different bleeder screws (causing me to scour locally for two that fir properly), and the parking brake shoes being shot once I got in there. Otherwise pretty straightforward.

Dave

[darrin]

dave -- which supplier's calipers did you purchase from Pelican? see they sell ATE, Porsche and PMB -- interested in knowing which used the two different bleeder screws

thx!

[dsscpa00]

Originally Posted by darrin

dave -- which supplier's calipers did you purchase from Pelican? see they sell ATE, Porsche and PMB -- interested in knowing which used the two different bleeder screws

thx!

PMB reconditioned

[NYNick]

Originally Posted by dsscpa00

Completed the project, ended up replacing the calipers with rebuilt units from Pelican. The pistons were frozen on the first old caliper I pulled off the car so I decided to punt on rebuilding them. New rotors, front wheel bearings, lines and pads. The parking brake is also new as the shoes were shot.

So the surprises were the calipers not being salvageable, the new calipers coming with two different bleeder screws (causing me to scour locally for two that fir properly), and the parking brake shoes being shot once I got in there. Otherwise pretty straightforward.

Dave

Why weren't the calipers salvageable? I just rebuilt 4 and all 4 had frozen/rusted pistons.

[darrin]

dave -- thanks for the clarification -- strange that PMB didn't recondition them to be identical to one another -- wouldn't be happy about that either

[dsscpa00]

Originally Posted by darrin

dave -- thanks for the clarification -- strange that PMB didn't recondition them to be identical to one another -- wouldn't be happy about that either

No idea why they sent mismatched bleeder screws. Frustrating.

[dsscpa00]

Originally Posted by NYNick

Why weren't the calipers salvageable? I just rebuilt 4 and all 4 had frozen/rusted pistons.

They may be salvageable I was not able to get the pistons to budge and wasn’t going to loose more brain cells trying.

[Robey5]

Some of the guys around here love their pictures to prove the work was done, but I am of the type to not really care. .... except for that I'd love to see how rusty those piston sleeves were to make the calipers not salvage-able.

Your resume (having worked on vettes) means that it likely took you longer to jack up your P-car and remove the wheels than it did to actually do the brake job.

I rebuilt my calipers last year, and it really was a very easy job, compared to some of the garb that I've worked on in the past (....honorable mention goes to my friend's Taurus from the late 90s, what a POS design).

Welcome!

[KTL]

How were the bleeder screws mismatched? Are we talking about the hex/tooling on the screws not being the same size? If so, that's annoying but not the end of the world. As long as the threads are proper size/pitch and the shape of the bleeder tip matches the machined seat in the caliper, it's just an annoyance of having to use two different wrenches to open/close the bleeder screw.