MDGA16

I was wondering what the difference between front calipers and rear calipers are in general, on a b13 specifically. NOT the fronts are AD7HA, rears are... etc.

Do they just rotate the caliper 80 degrees clockwise etc... would that be possible? Inquiring minds...

Ninety-Nine SE-L

ok, so I assume you have 4 wheel disc brakes and you would like to know how different the front calipers are from the rear calipers?

There is a huge difference between the front and rear calipers, you could never switch them out w/ eachother. First off, the rear calipers have a lever on the back for the e-brake line. Rear calipers are also smaller than the front. The pads are about half the surface area. The rear discs are about 1/4 the width of the front ones. If you took a look at a set of front calipers and a set of rear calipers, you could never confuse the 2.

MDGA16

Im blessed to have good old drums in the back of my se. I was just wondering what the differences where, if it was possible to use the front calipers in the rear somehow and swap in some better ones for the front. What if you sacrificed your ebrake, and transferred the rotors back... would the fronts rotate and bolt on if you have the spindles? Not looking for a half-ass swap, just curious.


Thanks for the reply... was waiting to get roasted, but i wanted to know.

Ninety-Nine SE-L

I would never want to sacrafise the e-brake, but that's mainly b/c I have a manual, I don't want my car jus rolling away one day.

There's a thing called brake bias. Since ~70% of braking is done on the front wheels due to weight shifting, you never want your rear brakes to be as strong (or more strong) than your fronts b/c they will easily lock up first and you'd fishtail almost anytime you were braking through a turn.

I also doubt your front calipers will bolt correctly to the rear hub area.

Your best option by far is to find a set of SE-R rear discs, it's actually easier than it looks. The parts are readily available (new even). I'm not sure what is needed for the B13 drum to disc conversion, but from what I've heard, the B13 disc conversion has always been easier than the B14 disc conversion, up until fastbrakes came up with a product that made the B14 rear conversion a snap.

My current car has rear discs, but I actually did the conversion on my old 97 GXE. I had a writeup published in NPM back in Feb: http://www.nissanperformancemag.com/february04/brakes/
I suggest you read through that and then take a look around the forum for the B13 conversion instructions, I know it's been discussed before.