[chadillac2000]

I don't typically double post things that I place in my build thread, but I felt like this needed to be searchable as it could help some fellow owners out -- especially the INPA bleeding bit. Forgive me for the long post and copy/pasted sections.

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A few months ago I embarked on the journey of completely replacing my brake system.. I started with the ECS Performance front/rear service kit complete with 2 piece drilled/slotted front rotors, GEOMET drilled/slotted rear rotors, front/rear Hawk HPS pads, Pentosin Super DOT 4, pad sensors, ECS stainless steel exact-fit lines and new installation hardware.









The first order of business was to get the car in the air. With the lowered stance, even with a low-profile jack, getting the car up in the air is a time consuming affair. I can only imagine that when the new aero parts are bolted into place that this will only become more challenging.





Wheels off to expose the before picture of the stock brake system.





Now, time to unpack all these parts I’ve accumulated.





As recommended by a fellow forum member, I decided to give the non-friction part of the rear rotors a blast of high-temp black paint to match the 2-piece look of the fronts. Prepared them with a little tape, three coats of paint and voila! I also gave the dust shields and caliper brackets a fresh coat of high temp black.







The old hardware came off without too much fuss, thanks to a few YouTube videos for clarification. Old sensors, pads, and rotors were tossed – calipers were packed up and shipped out for powder coasting and rebuilding. Then I went ahead and connected the new sensors, mounted the rotors and positioned the ECS stainless lines. Visually, I’m very impressed. The new calipers should really make everything pop.







Fast forward a few weeks later when I received my calipers from the rebuilding and powder coating process.

I first contacted Josh at Detective Coatings a few months ago to begin preparations for this latest tear down. He was more than helpful from beginning to end, and we first began by discussing pricing for his services. For $500 (not including shipping in either direction), all four calipers would be disassembled, stripped, powder coated a color of my choice, and rebuilt with new seals and dust boots. I sent the money, scheduled the time within a few days of when I'd be sending them (he ordered the rebuild kit at this time), and settled on Illusion Red for the color. I hoped the final result would be resemble the same red found on the Blackline taillights.

Fast forward a month and the car was up on stands and I had the old brake system off the car. I quickly packed up the calipers and got them shipped out to Savannah, Georgia from my location in North Carolina the very next morning. Josh confirmed delivery the next day and he began work.

A few days after that I get an email saying we have a problem. As Josh and I soon discovered, these OEM calipers have pistons that have ceramic inserts. The problem is these ceramic inserts warp over time because of heat and use, leaving them unusable when rebuilding.

These aren't my pictures, but for reference:







Since we hadn't thought to order replacement pistons, now we were left trying to locate a set. After some research and a bit of calling around for pricing comparisons, we located a full replacement set in all aluminum from Stoptech. The only downside -- an additional $355. At this point I was in at $855 plus shipping both ways.

Although this was a bit more than I had budgeted just for the calipers, they were now fully rebuilt with upgraded, brand new parts and when I pulled them out of the box yesterday upon arriving home from work, they certainly put a smile on my face.

I can't wait to bolt these up, bleed the system, mount up my ARC-8s, and get my 1er off jack-stands and on the road again. But until then, let's appreciate the beauty of Josh's work.













it was now time to move on to re-assembling all the brake components; the last task standing between me and getting my so-called daily driver back on the road. I'd already mounted the new rotors and mocked up the ECS SS exact-fit lines, so I began to put together the calipers with new pads and hardware.



Starting with the rears I grabbed the Hawk HPS pads with built in shims. I did quite a bit of research as to whether or not to keep the OEM shims on top of the integrated Hawk shims, and only gathered a bunch of conflicting information. Hawk states not to re-use, but a lot of users claim clunks and other noises attributed to the pad moving around a bit. I decided to re-use the rears to avoid this. Unfortunately I threw away the OEM pads on the front without prying off the OEM shims first, so I was forced to install the fronts with the Hawk HPS integrated shims only. I hadn't heard as much complaints seemingly about the fronts making noise, but only time will tell. I used the included grease on all contact points, and then the visible excess clean once assembled.



Cleaned up all the hardware with a wire brush because I couldn't imagine putting filthy hardware back on these gorgeous calipers.



I took my sweet time re-assembling everything as to ensure no problems once I was finished. I also attached the ECS SS exact-fit lines while they were on the bench.







The fronts went on easily, as did the rears. Whoa -- what a visual upgrade at the very least! I had to take a few shots as I took in the new view.





Next it was time to hook up the pressure bleeder and bleed all four corners. This sounded simple in theory, but would be far more difficult than I had originally anticipated for a few different reasons.

I'm usually one to completely plan out an install before taking it on, but for whatever reason, I was oblivious to the amount of air that I would have enter the system by removing the calipers and letting the fluid slowly drain out over the next few weeks. I assumed I'd be replacing the lines and hardware along with completely flushing out the system, so it wouldn't matter.

The first red flag came when I opened the brake reservoir after connecting all the new lines and calipers to emptiness. I still wasn't worried as I figured I would be flushing the system anyways. At this point I quickly realized that the one liter of Pentosin Super Dot 4 was absolutely not going to be enough to do a complete flush. Luckily my local Autozone had a few more liters on hand, so I quickly made the trip down the road and picked up the last two they had in stock to have on hand.

I filled the brake fluid reservoir, which took nearly an entire liter. Once that was at the max-fill line, I added a good amount of Pentosin Super DOT 4 to the inside of the pressure bleeder, attached the Euro fitting to the reservoir, and pumped the pressure up to 15psi.



Using the routine bleeding pattern, I went to the passenger side rear wheel and attached the bleeder bottle. The rubber nipple slid securely over the bleeder valve and left plenty of access the 11mm nut for opening/closing.



I crack open the rear bleeder screw and nothing. I double check all the connections, while the bleeder screw is open and the pressure bleeder is pressurized and still nothing. Eventually I get a little trickle of fluid. Same with the driver's side rear caliper. Over the next few hours I went to each wheel trying a combination of dry bleeding, pressurized bleeding, and standard two person bleeding. I eventually got the fronts bled with no air bubbles and plenty of flow coming through the drain tube, but no dice with the rears, especially the passenger side rear. Pedal feel eventually got decent, but as soon as the car started, it would become intermittent to the point where I wasn't comfortable doing a road test.

I removed the ECS line and bleeder screws to ensure the lines were free of any debris and confirmed the same amount of low flow from the OEM hard lines that run under the rear differential.

Since I've tripled-checked that there are no blockages, no kinked or bent lines, and the fact that everything is basically brand new, I believe there is some air in the ABS system that I must have introduced over the course of the car sitting on jacks with the brakes disconnected. The only solutions to this are a dealership visit to use their GT1, or what I'll be trying tonight, the INPA bleeding process. I haven't seen anyone confirm that it will work on the E82, but I will answer that soon enough. INPA bleeders claim a better pedal feel when compared to traditional bleeding methods.

As I mentioned in my last post, I suspected air had crept into system and was impeding flow to the rear calipers. This made bleeding the rear brakes impossible no matter the method I tried. This was especially frustrating considering how badly I just wanted to drive the car after sitting for so long. As usual when I find myself in a pickle, I headed to Google. Since I had went back through everything and double checked for blockages, I could either head to the dealership to connect to their system or find a way to bleed the lines with INPA. These seemed to be my last two options before dis-assembling everything and checking for some type of hardware issue with the caliper itself.

With the help of my trusty Windows 32-bit I snagged off eBay to code my injectors and the INPA K+DCAN cable I decided to attempt to bleed the brakes via computer before exploring the dealership route. I searched for hours after calling it quits the night before, and found no one that verified that this process had been performed on an E82 platform. This left me skeptical that I would be able to connect to the DSC system that could flush and bleed all four brakes properly.

Never the less, I headed back to the garage after I got off work to give it a shot. First up was getting the car back off the ground. The side skirts extensions and front lip make this an adventure! I also hooked up my battery charger just in case. Luckily I have about 5 low profile jacks and a few jack pad inserts at my disposal. I connected to the car just the way I would when I was coding the injectors -- ignition on.



From there I started exploring the possible options that this software allowed. I began by selecting my chassis code, which for this instance was E87. By selecting E87, that opened up a few different options. From there I selected Chassis, followed by Dynamic Stability Control.



That brought up warning messages about non-matching languages and versions.





If you continue to hit OK, you'll find yourself at another main menu. From the screen below, I pressed F6 to Activate.



Now we had arrived at what I had been looking for and my skepticism of being able to connect began to subside somewhat.



I had picked up a few more liters of Pentosin beforehand because I knew I'd be flushing quite a bit of fluid through the system. I used this to top off the reservoir and closed the cap. I reattached the bleed bottle and fitting over the bleeder screw of the right rear caliper and made sure that the end of the hose in the bottle was submerged under fluid as to not suck up any additional air bubbles back into the system. At this point I went back in the car and selected DSC rework bleeding RR from the menu. A notification then popped up instructing me to go to right rear caliper and loosen the bleeder screw.



I did just that, then returned to the driver's seat and selected Ok. What happened next nearly blew my mind. Luckily I was on my toes, because the first time caught me off guard. I was immediately given a set of on-screen "live" instructions on how to work the brake pedal while the system was doing its thing. This involved 2-3 minutes of activating/releasing the brake pedal, pressing the pedal down 80%. etc. The entire time the DSC module is vibrating audibly as it pushes fluid through the system. I was amazed. Here's a quick video of this in action:

If you watched the entire video, once the sequence is complete, you will receive another notification that directs you to close the same bleeder screw you opened before.



After just one round of flushing, the tube extending from the bleeder screw to the bottle was completely full of fluid with no visible air bubbles. This was a very welcomed sight. After closing the bleeder screw and selecting Ok once again, I headed back to the brake fluid reservoir to find it quite low. I topped it off again and proceeded to do the exact same process on the other three corners using the same RR, RL, FR, FL technique and topping off the fluid after each corner. Then I re-bled the entire system a second time just to be sure and topped off the brake fluid reservoir one final time before firing the car up, but I could already feel the pedal was far better than before.

Let the ignition turn on for a few seconds to prime the fuel pump (something I habitually do now) and hit the start button. The car fired right up, stumbled for a quick second under cold start, and then cleared up indefinitely as the cold start mode finished and the RPMs settled down. For such a tame tone when warm, this catless setup is loud under cold start. Makes me want to explore the MHD option to disable this. I ensured that there were no leaks with the new water pump, that the belt system was functioning properly, and that there were no other liquids dripping anywhere.

Success! Pedal feel is a little softer than before, but is to be expected with all new hardware and no bedding yet. The conditions outside were wet and slippery so I figured I'd save bedding the brakes for another day this weekend even though I was dying to get the car back on the road. I'll report back with more pictures and comments on the new brakes when the weather clears!