Ultra's 86 951 LS430 brake upgrade

This is first time doing a write up here:

So here it goes from the start, first thanks to the previous posts from xschop and others and for making it appear as something "doable" for a 944 based Porsche, To begin the differences at a glance, later I will detail the one specific to my upgrade,

Early and late, turbo , n/a models differ, offsets, caliper ears, mounting of rotor, rotors, hubs, bearings, spindles, dust shields, control arms, Lower strut to spindle mounting base I think I got everything but may have left something out.

First some pics of original setup on my 86 Turbo 951 and the new that will be bolted on!

will continue when I figure out how to load pictures , its not working as per described on how to upload.

later.

You might try getting a photobucket.com account, that's been the easy way to do it for me across many forums.

Hey Raymond, the only thing extra you need is 10mm brake crush washers. And use Photobucket.

Well here I am going to try to get the pics on!

Now where did I leave off?

ok....

First some pics of original setup on my 86 Turbo 951 and the new that will be bolted on!

now lets see if it got where it needed to go?



As You can see the rotors are quite a bit different in size, the left one is a 2004 Boxter S front rotor, 318 mm diameter the other is a 86 Turbo factory with hub.







Rotor thickness is also obvious!



All that is bolted to the spindle forgot to include the dust shield here, but it is below minus the caliper bolts.



On the above pictures I set an original factory Brake pad below the LS430 pad for comparison. You can also see between the rotor and the wheel spacer the centering ring the bracket provided by xschop for caliper and rotor mounting.

I went ahead and installed all new wheel bearings on the hubs because I don’t want to have to do this in a while.




Here you can see the spindle knuckle the one north to south is the later one and the one east to west is the factory 86, you can see the end is 19mm as opposed to 17mm also the inner bearing centering surface is thicker by about the same ratio, so in all the later ones are beefier and more heavy duty. Adding to it “BIGGER” inner and outer wheel bearings as well to the combination. The locking nut is the same for both.



There’s also more webbing in the spindle’s base making it stronger , the ears are closer together than in the turbo’s, to the rate of 72mm vs. 94mm. The base that mounts to the strut is the same thickness as the 86 turbo as well as the ball joint eye.






You can see that no modification was done to the strut base because I have adjustable camber plates installed on my car.



Used the same bolts to mount spindle to strut and ball joint. The struts are Koni yellows adjustable struts with progressive coil springs and sturdier heavier duty bump stops. Can’t see those here but for reference as to lower strut detail.




Parts involved in the whole job



Forgot the dust shield but look below, some extra hardware had to be purchased separately 9/16 x 18 fine x 4” long and the longer bolts in metric 12mm x 1.5mm x 60 mm or 2.4” long, together with a set of protective and spacing washers and lock washers.



ok time to rest I will finish this another day, got to be up in a few hours!


For reference a close-up of the pads on the left a brembo factory and the LS430 on the right.



Note the caliper from the LS430 has 42 mm pistons x 4!
Vs the brembo smaller pistons, I think there is a post here on the size of those factory ones to the tune of 38mm and 36mm on the bottom if I am not wrong.



And here’s the factory 86 brembo below, the close up was aprox. the same, so you can see the difference.





Above I set a factory pad below the LS430 one for size reference below the caliper, also between the rotor and the wheel spacer used for my offset aftermarket euromiester fuch’s 8” wide you can also see the bracket and centering ring for the rotors provided by xschop thanks! For making this a whole lot easier and on a budget.



Here is the bracket test fit on the spindle with the bolts only finger tight and not all the way.



The dust shield unmodified installed with the hub.





Above you see a close up of the shield and the bracket bolts I used protruding a little but since it won’t interfere with anything I did not worry about it so you can use 54mm ones to have a more flush factory look to your project.

Shield modified to receive the bigger caliper and provide shielding from the elements.



Centering ring in place.



New rotor and spacer doing its job.



Rotor and spacer together making the axle easier to install or change the tire without the flopping of the rotor since it is not one you can secure to the hub since there is no meat for the conical common type found in Porsches for centering the rotor on hub. So this makes up for “holding” the rotor centered and in place. The spacer are made in Germany from the very best quality centering inside and out for Porsche specific applications. I had to use my 20mm studded and perfect for my clearance from my 16” wheel.





Caliper installed.



Assembly with caliper comparison with rotor installed.



See the spacer is the same exact outer diameter as the rotors inner center body.



Note the caliper pin outer eye it had to be shaven a little to provide necessary wheel to caliper clearance.



Top view all ready for the wheel to be mounted. Oh and the brake pad wear sensor fits right on without modification on the LS430 pad. Here it was lying over on top.



A note so far about how it all worked only doing the fronts first.............

[b]A W E S O M E! that's the best description on top that I did it on an incredible budget, Today I cleaned and repainted my front caliper to install on the rear to make it a more balanced system since I went 42mm x 4 on the front the small brembo pistons were not quite the measure.

I am easily able to feather the brake to a simulated no lock abs kind of very hard stopping and very little pedal effort, that's the best thing about it because before I had to apply a lot of brake pedal effort to get it to stop where I wanted and most of the time I overshot the spot by more than a car length if I did not start to stop early the thing early on any apex, Tomorrow there will be the first try at the autocross and will report on the performance of this upgrade.

worth the time and money can't go wrong! though

I will detail cost and time at another time

fast car? not so bad of a driver and good stopping if not great stopping power now should get me some first place timed lap, will see tomorrow.
for the guy who asked on pm,
the rotors used are from 04 boxter S
the calipers are from an 02 ls430
hope this helps.

I'd like to see pictures of fitment with the 20mm spacers underneath 16" PD wheels. Is this possible to do using the stock 86T rotors, so as to avoid having to machine the hubs and use centering rings? Thanks.

Doug, I saw your PM about the Lex calipers on the 86 951. The 94mm C2C axial mounting on the spindles do not allow for a 130mm radial mount Lex adapter. Raymond swapped in 87-up NA spindles (76mm axial ears and larger stub shafts). The only other safe alternative is to install billet hubs for over-the-rotor mounting which I believe I'm the only one that has ever designed and built.

https://944hybrids.forumotion.com/t1796-na-and-86-turbo-billet-hubs?highlight=billet+hubs

xschop wrote:Doug, I saw your PM about the Lex calipers on the 86 951. The 94mm C2C axial mounting on the spindles do not allow for a 130mm radial mount Lex adapter. Raymond swapped in 87-up NA spindles (76mm axial ears and larger stub shafts). The only other safe alternative is to install billet hubs for over-the-rotor mounting which I believe I'm the only one that has ever designed and built.

https://944hybrids.forumotion.com/t1796-na-and-86-turbo-billet-hubs?highlight=billet+hubs

I know the 87+ spindles are stronger, its just that I dont want to have to get new A-arms, tie rods, and wheels to properly convert to late offset. I could run just the late hubs/spindles on my early A-arms but I will lose my negative camber. I thought the 86T spindles could be used so long as .06 was taken off, or is that only for early N/A spindles?

I would not modify an 86T hub, it is already the weakest hub with little webbing compared to the early NA hub. You might try cutting an early NA hub OD to fit precisely inside the Boxster S rotor as it would self-center when bolted up...JAT