Reman'd ZCP rear calipers 'upgrade'?

[BigRussia]

I recently had to purchase a re-manufactured front brake caliper after an extractor bit broke off inside a broken bleeder screw while attempting to remove it (doh!!). I bought it on RockAuto and was quite inexpensive for what I am hoping is a quality reman of a genuine OE BMW brake caliper, done by a company called Cardone. While I never heard of them before but researching them seems reman'ing OE equipment is their thing. Anyway I haven't installed the caliper yet but looks pretty good and well yeah looks like a fresh brand new OE BMW caliper with new seals and plugs.

Ive been tracking my car more and gotten my water temps cooling issue under control (will update my running thread there soon) and have been looking for some used ZCP rear calipers with their larger diameter pistons to complete the ZCP/Euro rotors setup I currently run (and bring some bias back to the rear so the fronts aren't doing so much of the work, get ALOT of front pad dusting), and got me thinking... how about buying a pair of fresh reman'd ZCP rear calipers from RockAuto? Since any used ZCP calipers I pick up would still need to be rebuilt and refreshed. The ZCP calipers are reman'd by Centric apparently (which i would feel more comfortable with knowing of that brand over 'Cardone') and are $120 each with a $70 core, so only around $50 each after returning the core for freshly rebuilt ZCP calipers!

Wanted to see if anyone's had experience with re-manufactured brake calipers and their reputations and if I should avoid them for track use, before I bite the bullet and buy the Centric reman'd ZCP rear calipers as a nice little upgrade to complete my OE ZCP brakes setup and even out my brake bias for track duty (my MK60 module was already coded for ZCP brake bias apparently, from a previous owner, dunno why they did but prob when they coded the MDM function). Thanks

PS. If anyone happens to have a set of rear ZCP calipers in good condition they would like to sell Id be interested in those as well of course

[bigjae46]

Aren't the ZCP rears the same as the non-ZCP? Just the brake rotors?

[nahvkolaj]

Aren't the ZCP rears the same as the non-ZCP? Just the brake rotors?

ZCP rear calipers have a larger piston. Only fronts are the same.

Last I looked a week or so ago the reman’d ZCP rears were out of stock.

Word of caution on the reman’d calipers: you’ll want to paint them most likely. Got some Centrics for my X5, and while Rock Auto claims they’re “coated”, the ones I got weren’t.

[BigRussia]

ZCP rear calipers have a larger piston. Only fronts are the same.

Last I looked a week or so ago the reman’d ZCP rears were out of stock.

Word of caution on the reman’d calipers: you’ll want to paint them most likely. Got some Centrics for my X5, and while Rock Auto claims they’re “coated”, the ones I got weren’t.

Yeah I was debating painting this front reman'd Cardone one gloss black to match the other front caliper (for the CSL look), but since it came coated in a dark grey paint already I was thinking to skip and save myself some time. Were the Centric ones you got a dark grey finish as well? IIRC Cardone's site said they were painted and coated. But Ill keep that in mind in case I go with the Centric rear ZCP calipers.

And yeah last I checked there was only 1 in stock of each, I wasnt going to make the purchase till later maybe before the summer where I usually take a break from track days.

[nahvkolaj]

Yeah I was debating painting this front reman'd Cardone one gloss black to match the other front caliper (for the CSL look), but since it came coated in a dark grey paint already I was thinking to skip and save myself some time. Were the Centric ones you got a dark grey finish as well? IIRC Cardone's site said they were painted and coated. But Ill keep that in mind in case I go with the Centric rear ZCP calipers.

And yeah last I checked there was only 1 in stock of each, I wasnt going to make the purchase till later maybe before the summer where I usually take a break from track days.

I can take a pic when I get home from work, but Centric claimed they were coated in some way for rust prevention. Pretty sure it was bare iron from the way they are rusting. I had not seen enough clean, unpainted iron in my life to notice that they just weren’t finished at all, thought it was some sort of dark grey coating. Really wish I had just painted them black right out of the box.

Edit: here’s a screenshot of what I ordered:

[BigRussia]

Hmm yeah the pic of it looks very similar to the Cardone front caliper I got. Now I'm wondering if this coating I thought was grey paint is just that same rust preventative coating on the bare iron. Here's the Cardone caliper description, but the finish is called 'Oil Emulsion'. I'll also take and post a pic of the caliper later.

[elbert]

Based on my experience with Centric rebuilt caliper on my 325 wagon, I would not recommended them -- they rusted quickly and the seals IMO are poor quality.

IMO you are much better off buying Ate seals for the front caliper and rebuilding it yourself.
You'll have to get Genuine BMW seals for the ZCP rear caliper if you decide to rebuild the ones you buy.

[Pklauser]

Yea I've had pretty rough experiences with Cardone/Centric caliper rebuilds on other cars. Centric definitely seemed better than Cardone, but if you have a good set of OE calipers, replacing the seals and even the pistons if needed is a better route IMO.

Otherwise you can sometimes find Ate rebuilds that are of a high quality in my experience. The fact that they won't even paint the caliper seems indicative of the quality level you're working with.

[nahvkolaj]

Centric remans after 7 months in the desert. X5 has over 180k miles and the stock calipers were pretty bad. Paint them!

[BigRussia]

Holy hell that looks rough! Thanks for all the feedback and experience info everyone. I will now try to save my front caliper with one last attempt to extract this broken extractor bit and bleed screw, rather than swap in this reman'd Cardone one that I'll need to rebuild the seals and paint. My current calipers were rebuilt not even 2 years ago so yeah rather just try to save my caliper and myself any potential headaches. I bought a Rescue Bit to drill out the broken extractor, fingers crossed I can get it out without messing up the bleed screw threads in the caliper (went with a 1/8" bit with the bleeder screws being just under 1/4" diameter).

And yeah lastly I will pass on getting reman'd Centric ZCP rear calipers, unless I was also ready to buy the rebuild kits and paint them. Ill keep an eye out for any used sets in the future. Thanks again all!

[old///MFanatic]

Decades ago had a similar broken bleeder experience off a rare caliper pulled off a crashed car. Took it to a machine shop that specialized in this and got it out no problem.

[Cronenberged]

Rear ZCP piston is 1mm larger

[mrgizmo04]

Between ZCP vs non:
-Front - caliper is the same with 60mm piston
-Front - 345x28mm swiss cheese "semi" floating rotor vs 325x28 solid
-Front - due to rotor size diff mounting brackets on front are different
-Rear - 46mm piston vs 42mm
-Rear - same size rotor 328x20, except swiss cheese "semi" floating vs solid
-Rear - mounting brackets the same

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk