Toyota calipers - 14" aftermarket wheel clearance

[pbarcher]

Hi All,

I want to install the Toyota 4 piston front calipers on my 1973. Several in my club have done this but have had mixed results with clearance using 14" wheels. A kit vendor has told me that it's possible to grind the calipers or use a spacer but advised me to upgrade to larger wheels. Wouldn't a spacer require longer studs?

I really want to keep these wheels because they are unique and look great but don't want to spend a few hundred on parts that can't be returned. Advice really appreciated.

Peter

[240260280z]

I did this upgrade with 14" western wheel turbines. No problem with clearance.

[Oiluj]

they fit with my 14" Shelby slotted mags before I got my Panasports.

[Mike W]

Peter,

I just went through this myself as I have started a compete refresh of my front end. As a part of that I was planning to also go with the 4 piston Toyota upgrade, but learned later on that 14 inch wheels are very questionable. I can tell you for sure that the upgrade which Arizona Z sells (they use Wilwood calipers) will absolutely not fit on 14 inch rims and in fact they recommend 16 if possible. When I spoke with the vendors of the Toyota solution, none of them would guarantee a fit although I was told that this works for some wheels and not for others. Unfortunately none of them had any specifics on which wheels worked and which didn't and so this seemed to be very risky to me, especially given that there were no return priveleges on the brake upgrade parts. It was also suggested that this could possibly be accomplished with spacers, but there is a reasonable liklihood that you would have to go with longer studs depending on the size of the spacer that you would need for your specific application. In the end I decided not to go this route. Incidentally I have 14 inch Appliance "mesh" mag wheels which are period correct for the car, and much like you decided that I did not want to change them out especially given that I had just had them restored and purchased new tires about 5 months ago.

In the end I decided to completely rebuild my existing calipers and went with upgraded pads and rotors. I ended up with pads from Porterfield and upgraded rotors from Powerslot which I think will be a good bolt on alternative to the 4 piston upgrade I was considering. I still do not have this installed yet and so I cannot speak to the performance improvement over the stock system, but given everything I have read about the robustness of the original OEM design coupled with the fact that I only use the car for the street, I think this will end up being a good choice.

Let me know if I can help you out any further on this.

Mike.