11 Feb E60 M5 E38 Big Brake Kit : Braking It Down
Ever wondered what it takes to put E60 M5 brakes on an E38? Well, wonder no more as we tackle it in our E60 M5 E38 Big Brake Kit swap blog!
The fabrication side of Fluid has been quite busy over the last few days working on this brake swap. A long-time client of ours, his E38 has been through this shop for many previous modifications. Instead of going fast, though, this time is all about slowing down, as we’re swapping out the E38’s stock brake rotors and calipers for a set from an E60 M5. The size difference in both caliper and rotor is not unsubstantial, so this car should have absolutely no problem dodging all the loonies on the freeway. Plus, they’ll look menacing as hell when poking out from behind his stock wheels. Provided the new brakes even fit behind the stock wheels….cue suspenseful music.
Here’s two shots of the size of the stock E38 rear brakes:
And now, the project begins! You can see the difference between the two rotors on the ground. That front caliper is absolutely massive!
Before we start getting into fitment pictures, let’s get into a small explanation of how big this job actually is. Not all BMWs are made alike, and it can be especially tough to make a E60 M5 E38 Big Brake Kit by retrofitting from a newer car (that’s benefitted from several extra years of R&D) onto an older car. But it’s certainly not impossible, as Craig and Tom are currently showing us. For the rear brakes, the dust shield had to be trimmed down to fit the larger brakes, the rear hub’s eyelets had to be drilled out for the larger caliper bolts, caliper brackets had to be milled down, and the faces of the hub’s eyelets had to be shaved a bit in order to fit everything. After that, they fit right in, and after test-fitting the wheels, it fit quite well. As Ace Ventura would put it, “like a glove.”
The front brakes, however, are proving to be a bit trickier. On top of the dust shield removal that mirrored the rears, the caliper brackets had to have a new mounting face welded on, which then had to be milled down. Along with that, the caliper brackets needed to be drilled and tapped to fit in correctly, among a host of other steps. Again, these brakes look mean as hell underneath this car.
Finally, once the test-fitting was (mostly) complete, we removed all the caliper-related parts and put them in the vibratory finisher to remove the old coat of paint and get the surfaces ready to be painted a new coat of gloss black. This car is going to be so stealth, it’s not even funny.
Oh yeah, we are powdercoating the valve covers, too. This is just a really good excuse to get a shot from inside the finisher. For somebody with little to no machinery experience, this is an interesting thing to watch.
In other news, the X5 received some vinyl today to complete its urban assault theme. And assault the urban landscape, it shall. More on this soon!
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