California State Route 108, Sonora Pass Road is finally open! With Giulia I beat my best time with the Protege by 10 minutes (over a 2 hour drive) on the first try.

The snow is still about 5' deep on the sides of the road near the summit. Temperature varied from 37-40F.

I gave it full throttle only once--on the first sharp turn. Compare with Protege which requires the comparatively simple driving method of "floor it and shift when/if you hit the redline". Giulia swung the rear out and as far as I could tell no nannies cut in although the front drive did cut in and straighten things out. This road is way too dangerous to drive that way. I burned a lot of fuel in the process, but still have a silly grin on my face.

I think upgraded tires should take priority over anything else for my driving situation. More power is pretty useless without more traction on this road. Somehow I doubt that I could take any advantage of the power of a QV on this road.

 

My Jackpoint Jackstands finally arrived. See picture of Giulia up on the stands. They worked exactly as advertised. I left the jacks in place for convenience. I got 2 jacks so I can lift the car evenly.

I finally can take a wheel off and poke around. Here are a few notes:

No sign of the too tight brake sensor wire on the front wheels. However, every kind of wire to the rear wheel was pulled taught with the rear suspension at full extension. All of the wires look very fragile for snow conditions. I am surprised that the wires are not run along suspension components so that they would be protected from damage.

This is a sport everything Q4 MY2018. I now see 3 vents in the lower grills:

1) A small and very hard to see vent on the outside that is connected to a vertical slot shaped opening on the outside front edge of the liner.

2) A much larger and easily seen opening that connects to a rectangular opening on the far inside of the liner. This one appears to be intended to cool the front brakes unlike my past discussion with @MacGeek. There is a large matching opening in the brake back plate, perhaps for the same purpose and negating the value of some of @Call me Al work to make a ventilating brake plate.

3) The obvious opening for the radiator.

The engine compartment is largely open to the wheel well.

The front antisway bar is huge, measuring 1.25" (32mm?) diameter. I think that is the same diameter as the front bar on my pickup truck which has 4000+ pounds on the front axle and a very high center of gravity.

I measured 3" of downward suspension travel, both front and rear.

I did not see any suspension stops. I presume that the shocks do double duty. I did not see any wires to the rear shocks; maybe only the fronts are adaptive?

There seems to be plenty of room around the front suspension components to allow for things like VRH. The rear looks more problematic with separated spring and shock distributing loading differently than a coil over and the short wire issue.

 

@lockem

Slightly off topic, but where did you get these sideskirts? Are these OEM Quad parts? That's pretty much what I want to have on my (future) car.

http://www.giuliaforums.com/forum/385-exterior/37186-quadrifoglio-sideskirts-2-0-model.html

 

What you see are custom made adhesive vinyl trim.

While the car was on the stands I observed that the side skirts appear to simply snap on. There are snaps all along the inside lower edge, only visible with the car lifted up. There is probably some trick to release the top of the skirt, then the skirt will rotate down and off. I have no idea if the QV skirts will fit, but given that the newly revised Veloce model has the QV side skirts, it seems likely.

I'm not sure I would install the QV side skirt. It sticks out kind of wide and looks like it might collect dirt. All that dirt you see on my car is from 1 four hour drive, btw. Also, the QV has a highlight on the rear fascia such that the car looks like it had wings and elevators that were sliced through.

 

Thanks a lot!

 

The opening in the back plate is an access hole for the tie rod nut.

All four dampers are adaptive. Their wiring connects through the top, both on the fronts and the rears.

 

Thanks. Nothing goes through the hole in the brake back plate, which is above the tie rod end. So is that hole for inserting a tool (socket and extension) down onto the end? If so, it seems larger than necessary.

The front shocks are clearly marked ZF Sachs Made in Germany. My rear shocks had no manufacturers mark that I could find. Is that expected?

Other notes:

4 piston fixed mount calipers on the front. The lower fixing bolt has a large metal tab (about 20mmx30mm x 8mm thick) under the bolt head. Except for a hole for the bolt the tab is plain and appears to simply be a weight. What is this for?

Rear calipers are slide mounted with pistons on the inside. The emergency brake mechanism is also mounted on the inside of the caliper where it cannot be seen from the outside of the vehicle.

In either case it is not obvious how to remove the calipers to be able to remove/examine the rotors (I found a company that will make bespoke "hats" for light weight 2 piece rotors, but they need all of the dimensions). The brake line attached to the front calipers is steel and runs to a bracket before converting to rubber. Either the bracket or the attachment of the steel brake line to the bracket must be released before the caliper may be loosened. I have the shop manual, but haven't taken the time to find the procedure yet--also the shop manual procedures are sometimes excessively complex (e.g. remove and replace the start-stop button).

I did notice that the shop manual states that many of the nuts used in the suspension assembly must be discarded and replaced if removed. Do you know the reasoning behind that?

 

Yes, the hole is for working on the tie rod without having to remove the caliper, disc, and back plate.

Not sure about manufacturer markings on the rear dampers. They are supplied by ZF-Sachs as well.

That metal tab is indeed a weight. Its mass changes the resonant frequency of the caliper to avoid/mitigate NVH issues.

To remove the front caliper, the shop manual calls for installation of a vacuum tool on the brake fluid reservoir, and removal of the rigid portion of the brake line going from the caliper to the bracket. A purge will be needed after reassembly.

The rear caliper fixings are on the back, at the end of the slider pins, protected by dust covers.

Anyway, here's the technical drawings for the discs.

Front:

Rear:

As for the prescribed replacement of suspension nuts/bolts, I would guess that they are probably designed to stretch upon installation.

 

MacGeek,

Many thanks, way more information than I could reasonably have asked for but exactly what I needed.

Although "do not reuse" for nuts and bolts is invariably due to distortion caused by installation, that distortion may be due to stretch or due to a lock-nut taper in the threads. If the later, replacement of the nuts with titanium or similar to save weight is not advisable. The tightening torque does not seem very high and replacement of the matching bolt was not prescribed, so I am somewhat suspicious that the later is the case.

 

Here are a few more random-ish observations:

The brake lights are brighter than the back up lights.
For that matter the rear FOG light is brighter than the back up lights. Perhaps turning it on will help with night time backup camera performance? I gotta remember to try that.

The advanced headlights apparently have 3 height positions: low, high, and somewhere between that it hits when dipping the lights sometimes while turning.

A rough road surface (like tree root damaged) and stomp the accelerator == some kind of nanny cuts in and not much change in the forward motion happens.

Giulia coasts downhill really fast; much faster than any of my other vehicles. Even the Subaru which is similar in weight and gets better fuel economy.

First hickup in the 4500 miles I have on the car: it lost the station that I had SiriusXM tuned to and reset to the free channel (nothing but ads for SiriusXM).

DTE is pretty useless. Today with 25MPG showing on the gauge and only 3 bars on the fuel gauge, after a relatively short downhill drive the sum of distance traveled and DTE reached 750 miles--I wish.

 

I finally made it to the Bridgeport transfer station. With a 1/2 tank of gas, all junk removed from the car and without me on scale it read 3620 pounds. Pretty close to the manual 3643 pound number for my Q4.

 

I made progress with Umbrella designs for a Variable Ride Height system. Unfortunately it seems that they do not have a clever solution to the problems that I initially discussed: their system requires coil over conversion and their "convert any shock to coil over" consists of buying a kit from KW. However, KW clearly stated long ago that they would not make any such kit for the adaptive shocks for Giulia.

Next issue is that the wiring to the rear brake and hub is taught at full (stock) extension. Putting a pneumatic piston above the rear shock to extend the suspension down would likely break something. Umbrella designs gave me a snide comment when I brought this up.

Thus I am back to a hybrid air-bag/spring system for raising Giulia up for driving over deep(ish) snow. In this case the suspension downward travel (I measured 3" or 75mm) is reduced when in the raised position, but there is less messing with the suspension components. This is straightforward to install in the rear (get custom softer springs, then install airbag inside of the spring), not so simple in the front (not clear if it can be done).

----
I also have ordered a set of QV Tecnico front wheels for the car. The weight savings is significant (about 6.2 pounds each). It seems that these are best fitted with 245 35R19 tires (same as QV front stock size) which are available as Michelin A/S 3+ with or without runflat. The run flats are 3 pounds each heavier while the non run-flats are about the same weight as the original Centurato 225 40R19s, so I am inclined to go non-runflat and carry a flat fix kit. I have only gotten a flat that needed to be fixed on the road once (since 1974) and that was in 1982 and likely caused by an overinflated tire.

Also, thanks to help from @MacGeek I have ordered a set of light weight brake rotors from Ceika. More on this after they are delivered. Assuming they fit and work properly, you should be able to order them for your own car. Too bad swapping the fronts is such a pain...

 

Also, thanks to help from @MacGeek I have ordered a set of light weight brake rotors from Ceika. More on this after they are delivered. Assuming they fit and work properly, you should be able to order them for your own car. Too bad swapping the fronts is such a pain...

Definitely looking forward to hearing about these brake rotors.

 

I got the 4 Tecnico 19x8.5 wheels in silver ($1100 plus $350 shipping), had California Wheels powder coat them in Gunmetal (a slightly different shade of dark gray, similar in darkness to the Alfa "dark") ($700) , install generic TPMS ($200), and install Michelin A/S 3+ 245 35ZR19 tires (NOT ZPs) (price match Tire Rack plus $200 for Road Force balance install). I have not had a chance to photograph or get in a real road test yet. A quick test for balance on the freeway showed the new tires to be significantly quieter than the OEMs. Weight measurements however gave me disappointing results:

Tecnico 19x8.5 wheel should weigh 19.2 pounds (Fuchs specification)
TPMS should weigh about 0.1 pounds
Michelin A/S 3+ 245 35ZR19 tires should weigh 25 pounds
Total should be 44.3 pounds

5 hole 19x8 wheel should weigh 25.5 pounds
TPMS should weigh about 0.1 pounds
Pirelli Cinturato 225 40R19 Run Flat should weigh 25 pounds
Total should be 50.6 pounds

According to my not very accurate bathroom scale:

Tecnico weighs 20 pounds
Assembled wheel weighs 46 pounds (1.7 pounds more than expected). It seems that both the wheel and the tire are more-or-less 1 pound over the expected weights.

My worn OEM wheels weigh 48 pounds (worn out rears) or 48.5 pounds (a little life left fronts). I guesstimate that they weighs 49.5 pounds new or 1.1 pounds less than expected.

Thus, a 6+ pound weight reduction per wheel becomes only 3.5 pounds estimated <sigh>.

Other metrics:

Tread depth on one of the rear tires for each groove from outside to inside:

4.0mm
2.5mm (just touching the wear blocks)
3.0mm
3.8mm

So it seems that the sea level cold 37PSI that I had in the rear tires for most of these miles is too high. OTOH, I do my most aggressive driving between 7000 and 9600 foot elevation, where the pressure in the tire will increase by a couple of psi. YMMV.

I put the recommended 34PSI in the fronts and their wear is close to uniform with slightly more tread in the middle. They also have about 1mm more rubber than the rears.

The as-new tread depth is supposed to be 7.1mm (7.9mm for the Michelins)
Anyway, this appears to be confirmation that the door jamb inflation pressures are for a max-load vehicle, not for a "single occupant with little luggage" vehicle.

And yet another observation: I jacked up the car to change the wheels, removed the old wheel then when I tried to install the new wheel found that the car was too low and needed 1.5 more pumps on the jack handle to get the required clearance. The new tires are supposed to be smaller by 3.8mm in radius, which is a close match to the amount wear on my old tires. I have no idea of what is going on with this.

 

Pictures!
Bug splattered front. Not nearly as bad as Racer Z's grasshopper covered 4C, but still pretty gruesome.
Close up of FCW sensor. Some bug made it stop working, but by the time I took this picture it was back on.

19x8.5 Tecnico powder coated "Gunmetal" by California Wheels with Michelin A/S 3+ 245 35ZR19 tires fitted. OEM Tecnico B&W center caps.

Pirelli Cinturato 225 40R19 tire worn out at 8620 miles, with more wear in the center than outside. Matching fronts with some tread remaining.

 

Awesome! Look fantastic!

 

Lockem, that worn out tire looks like it had an overinflated life, center is very much more worn out than sides....what is the deal?
I know you push it over the passes but 8k miles is not normal shelf life for such a hard tire and if anything your sides should be shredded

 

Thanks. Yes, I know the wear pattern is consistent with over inflation. The tire was inflated at sea level to the AR recommended 37 PSI. This will translate to 40-41 PSI on the pass (assuming same temperature range) and is clearly too high. Higher inflation pressure in the rear tires of a slightly front heavy car also does not make sense to me.

The front tire wear pattern is more normal, but still over 1/2 of the tread depth is gone. If I had rotated the tires at 4-5k miles and inflated the rears at what is reasonable instead of the recommendation, the tires could reasonably be expected to last 12-15kmiles on my route.

With the Cinturatos, exiting the first hairpin on the pass the car would kick the rear out while other forum members report under steer; I believe that over inflating the rear tires will increase the tendency to over steer. After reducing the rear tire pressure I still got the rear sliding out, although by that time the tires already had the abnormal wear pattern.

FWIW: no slip and slide at all on the Michelin A/S 3+ tires. I currently have 34 front, 35 rear, but am thinking 32-33 front and rear would be better. In spite of the relatively small weight reduction, wheel hop on rough patches of pavement was very noticeably reduced. Got 0.93 gs on "Bobcat curve", this at roughly 20MPH; I finally remembered to force a downshift entering the turn--no sliding on the exit but lots of acceleration on the 15-20% uphill grade on the turn exit. The max I ever saw with the Cinturatos was 0.84gs. My quick summary: Michelin A/S 3+ is much better in summer conditions than Pirelli Cinturato run flat in every way (quieter, smoother, more traction). Only time will tell about life expectancy. Of course, they are pretty much twice the price, so one would hope they are better tires.

 

Some updates:

Koshi trunk spoiler (glue on): the right corner has come loose. I'll check with Imperial Works to see what they can do.

The Ceika light weight rotors (ring and hat) have arrived. They were shipped from Taiwan even though Ceika is based in Italy. DHL managed to mangle my address (removed the box number, altered the zip code, I have had this problem with DHL before) although I was still able to get delivery with a bit of assistance (good thing the post office staff knows me by name). The ring is painted and I need to find what to do (if anything) about that. I haven't had a chance to check the fit (anybody have the list of the required tools?). According to my not very accurate scale, the fronts are 5 pounds lighter than OEM and the rears are 2.8 pounds lighter than OEM. I got slotted (no holes) rings. Maybe I will see if Dawydiak will install them for me since they should have the right tools on hand.

I noticed that in the manual there is a different procedure for caliper removal for rotor replacement versus caliper removal for caliper replacement. The former is a lot easier (no opening the hydraulics).

I removed the Mopar/Alfa Romeo aluminum gas cap and put the OEM gas cap back on. The aluminum gas cap is hard to turn and does not fit the gas cap rest that is built into the filler door hinge.

 

What is the rotor painted with? Zink bath? If so, you are good to go.....
Is it a floating disk or its screwed solid on the hat? Got any pictures?

You could do disc swap yourself if you knew caliper bolt screws torque and what seize compound you are supposed to use....some caliper bolts are also single use but I doibt thats the case on Giulia

 

Appears to be ordinary paint. It is certainly not zinc. I'm not sure what zink bath (hot dip galzanizing?) is, please explain.

They appear to be screwed on solid. Not the best arrangement, but they seem to be the only available product for Giulia.

@ALFATECH says that AR says that the Caliper bolts must be replaced. However, I see no such specification in the manual. Maybe I am looking in the wrong place? I did see a specification in the manual that suspension NUTS (no mention of the bolts) must be replaced if loosened.

There are very few hex head fasteners on Giulia. Giulia has various size Torx and star head bolts for which I have nearly no tools. I think there are several different standards for star head bolts, just to make things more miserable. I presume that these fasteners were chosen for ease of assembly on an assembly line; they certainly were not chosen to make the mechanic's job easier.

Besides the caliper bolts there are some Torx head bolts that hold a bracket for the brake line that have to be removed. There are a bunch of wires that are supposed to be removed as well; I suspect otherwise the caliper cannot be move far enough out of the way to get the rotor off. There is also a bolt through the rotor hub to make taking wheels on and off easier.

Thunderstorms all weekend, yielding no chance to take wheels off and look at the fasteners. Giulia looks like she has been involved in some kind of off road adventure.

On other news, 0.96gs at "Bobcat curve*" on my Michelin A/S 3+ tires, now inflated at sea level to 32.5psi (35-36 psi at 6000'). Also pulled > 0.9gs in several other turns. That is uphill. Downhill speed at Bobcat curve is "not so's you'ld notice" due to not being able to see forward due to the gigantic rear view mirror and A pillar. Rocking my head right to left does not help.

Regarding @Racer Z's note that high g turns in long sweepers are something entirely different, I must agree. As I see it the real major difference is that your speed must be much higher which magnifies any driver errors or pavement faults into a life threatening situation. The high speed also creates a sight line issue. There are a long series of sweepers leading up to Sonora Pass, but I never get over 0.5 gs on them largely due to the sight line issue (need to be able to brake for deer, bicyclists, pedestrians, marines, sheep, bobcat, cows, rocks, patches of wet/ice, patches of sand, idiot drivers on the wrong side of the road, jack knifed trucks, etc etc). This is not a closed course, and that is not a hypothetical list of things encountered on this road at 11PM at night.

From 30MPH Giulia can stop in about 26 feet; the "standard" width of a two lane road. If the car skids sideways you have some "wiggle room". From 60MPH that increases to closer to 110 feet and you had better hold a line while braking. If in a high g turn you cannot hold the turn and brake at the same time; you will crash. At 100MPH you had better be able to see that the road is clear for a very long distance in front of you unless you have a death wish.

* There is a Bobcat that hangs out near the curve in order to get a free meal from roadkill.

 

One more update: while packing my stuff in the car to head back to Silicon Valley I was greeted by a bear! Chuffing and stomping (or whatever it is that they do that makes a thumping sound) as they do when frightened, I never saw the animal.

Reference
https://www.bear.org/website/bear-p...bsite/bear-pages/black-bear/communication/29-vocalizations-a-body-language.html

Under apprehensive expressions to hear what I heard.

Anyway, I'm starting to regret disabling the panic button on the fob...

I remote started the car hoping that the noise and lights would frighten the animal away, then waited 2-3 minutes. No more bear apparent. I had already packed my garbage and cooler in the trunk; items that might attract a bear. I did not see any evidence that said bear attempted to open the car.

My neighbor says only the rarely seen Badgers are aggressive.

 

Can you share the link to purchase the Ceika light weight rotors? Didn't see a fitment for the Giulia on their website...

 

You can request custom rotors, which is what I did. I sent them the diagrams that @MacGeek was kind enough to post. I have not yet checked if they fit and function properly I suggest that you wait until I do so, lest we all end up wasting our money.

Ceika's website feedback says they have fit problems with many of their big brake kits, so proper dimensional control is not a given.

 

As @lockem stated, the caliper mounting bolts (front) call to be replaced when removed, I personally see no need for it but my manual says it, so I do it. I’m all honesty I wouldn’t do it on my own car but I do for any customer cars because of lawyers, basically.

 

Can you tell me where that is in the service manual? I bought the MY2018 service manual on CD but do not see said statement and am wondering if I missed it or if the manual has been revised.

The usual reason for requiring nut/bolt replacement is that the fastener threads were designed to deform when torqued in order to keep it secure. There is rarely any risk that a reused fastener will break, but rather that it will vibrate loose over time. For example, suspension nuts often are crimped ever so slightly to make a lock-nut. This is commonly needed on suspension nuts which often do not put any tension on the shaft of the bolt. In a "normal" fastener the tension on the shaft of the bolt puts enough pressure caused friction on the threads to prevent the bolt from loosening.

And yes, I re-use nuts on my pickup truck suspension all the time. As long as the nut has good threads and is hard to turn (requires a wrench and non-trivial torque before it seats) it looks good to me.

For the record, I did not say that the manual says that the caliper bolts need to be replaced. I said that you said that the manual says that the caliper bolts need to be replaced.

 

I honestly only noticed when I was doing a steering knuckle on a Stelvio, I checked the instructions for the torque specs and it stated to replace the fasteners. I’m using techconnect btw, not sure what service manual you have, but I’ll check on Monday to confirm they are supposed to be replace.

 

OK, I now see where it says that the front caliper bolts must not be reused. This is in the service manual under torque specification.

Curiously the rear brake caliper adapter threads have thread lock on them, but the service manual makes no mention of cleaning or refreshing this possibly important material.

The parking brake wire is difficult to remove. The snap that holds it in was very hard to move (I had to use a flat blade screw driver to get a grip on it) and once it is pulled out to its stop you have to push down on it to release the catch that holds the connector in place.

To get the brakes into the service mode you have to do things that are not listed in the manual:
1) start the engine
2) apply the primary brakes
3) release the parking brake
4) release the primary brakes
5) now select "service brakes" on the infotainment screen
6) turn off the engine.

For the rear rotor swap I needed a flat blade screw driver, 17mm hex, T30, T45 and E18 tools.
Cleaning the new rotors with soap and water is a good idea as well. So is using some sand paper to clean the rust off of the wheel center guide and/or hub.

Oh yeah, found a nail in the inner sidewall of my right rear tire. It was down to 15psi too, apparently having leaked down slowly while the car was parked. I'll probably have to buy a new tire since the nail is in the sidewall.

The rear Caliper adapters are steel and weigh in at a whopping 1374 grams (3.03 pounds). Curious to find a hunk of steel between 2 aluminum parts (hub and caliper).

I measured 26.5 pounds for the two rear Ceika rotors together and 33 pounds for the two OEM rotors together. Measurements on the same scale to improve accuracy. The Ceika rotor brake surface thickness is 6.5mm versus the OEM 7.0mm. The Ceika rotor also has curved vanes inside unlike the OEM. Anyway, the rear Ceika rotors fit perfectly.

Don't forget to keep the trunk open after disconnecting the battery. Yes, the stick through the center fold down seat trick to open the trunk does work.

Got the christmas tree of death when I reconnected the battery and started the car. Hopefully that will clear after restarting the car a few times.

Out of time today to do the front brakes, so more on that and the error lights later.

I have a picture of the nail in the tire, but the forum will not let me post it and will not tell me why it will not let me post it.

 

Thanks for the thorough review. I am stuck doing rear brake service on 2018 Base Stelvio. I put brakes in service mode, then once driver side was put back together, I tested the brakes by pumping the pedal to ensure the piston was engaging. I then tried to proceed to do the passenger side, however the infotainment says "Cannot exit service mode while vehicle in motion". Odd, because the vehicle is parked on a flat surface. The state now remains that the passenger side rear brake won't let go, and the software won't let me attempt to retract the brakes again because it is in error state.

Any suggestions would be welcome. I already know I'm an idiot, so if you can see past that...

 

I’m doing

I’m doing a rotor / brake pad replacement too. Where did you get a new brake caliper bolt? I’ve been looking online for new bolts (Rock Auto) with no success.

 

Wow. You had a busy day. That is a lot to accomplish. Better to spot that tire now. Are you patching it since it is a slow leak. We only had 500 miles on ours and there is no way the dealership would have done the patch. I would have had to take it else where and Honestly with he QV we didn’t want to risk it in this heat with the Corsas. Too soft anyway. Even my husband is noticing how sticky they are and they have marked up our driveway more then the Truck. Out with he power washer.

 

3 starts with some time between them cleared the christmas tree of death. If you know what you are doing and have the right tools on hand, and fuss over the work you should be able to change a rotor in 30 minutes or so. The first one took me several hours while the second one took me less than 1 hour.

I suspect that the tire is not salvageable because sidewalls generally are not repairable. Just under 2000 miles on it.

I spent the last of the daylight giving her a bath. Last week's monsoon combined with my long dirt driveway made her into quite the muddy mess. I noticed that the drivers seat bolsters are showing a lot of wear already; especially the lower bolster on the seat back.

Also I finally have the tools on hand to remove the center seatbelt. No wires, no errors. The seatbelt and headrest weigh in at 2.9 pounds. Not a lot but every little bit helps. Of course, I now have a 4 passenger car, not a 5 passenger. That matters not in the least to me but could be a big deal for other Giulia owners. I would not put any older than child seat size child in that center position, much less an adult. I notice that the rear seat back latching mechanism is both heavy (there are 3 of them) while the cable is very fragile, not really a winning combination. The latch is built like a safety critical item, although it is not obvious how said latches would be important in an accident given that the seat back does not look like it take much of an impact.

My generic TPMS units appear to confuse the system in the car, as it was reporting the low tire pressure that is present in only 1 corner for all 4 corners.

 

The seatback latches absolutely are critical safety items. If they weren't designed as such, occupants could get killed by their own luggage in a crash.

 

Thanks, but doesn't that make the seat backs the foremost part of said critical safety system? The seat backs do not appear to be very sturdy; although strong enough that I can sit on them to work on the rear deck they groaned and complained about that much loading. I would think that 150 pounds of luggage flying across the trunk under the influence of 10-20 gs of deceleration would punch through and keep going.

Maybe the seat backs are stronger than they look/feel, I dunno.

 

Continuing the Ceika brake rotor installation. The front R&R is easier than the rear (took me 1.5 hours to complete both fronts, including the time to figure out what I was doing). The caliper bolts require a T55 bit. I used a small crescent wrench for the 2 small hex head bolts (8, 9 or 10mm wrench not sure which) that have to be removed from the brake line bracket. I'm not sure about the torque spec for the front caliper bolts: 37ft-lbs + rotate 20 degrees. Curiously my left caliper bolts were easier to loosen than my right.

The Ceika rotors fit perfectly and look great with the black finish. No brake noises observed so far.

My crummy scale weighs the OEM rotors at rather high 21 pounds each, making the Ceika front rotors a remarkable 5.75 pounds lighter.

I should get a chance for some long distance and more aggressive driving over the weekend.

 

Hi lockem,

I’m interested in replacing my rotors also. I’ve sent you a DM if you wouldn’t mind replying.

Thanks in advance!