General Afternoons work, rear disc conversion & KW suspension on Sei 1.4 16V

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General Afternoons work, rear disc conversion & KW suspension on Sei 1.4 16V

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Well the brackets arrived today from Jordan at Emma's dad's house and as he was off on holiday he phoned and suggested I take the Sei round and try them out.

So We fitted the brackets, bolted up the callipers and the 240mm solid discs that used to reside on the front of the Sei, probably only covered 1000miles if that before being ditched for the 257mm vented disc conversion using Punto GT callipers. Checked run out, spot on, and that disc sat in the middle of the calliper carrier, they were slightly offset to one side but nothing a few hardened washers inserted between the calliper holder and bracket to sort out, bang on 2.5mm clearance each side of discs now, both sides were the same.

Measured the length of brake line we needed, and while Emma's Dad headed off to Earls to get pipes made up I started 2nd side.

So all in place handbrake cable rerouted and attached to both callipers in time for the pipes.

Just about finished it all when UPS arrived, and low and behold they have the KW Suspension kit that was only ordered 3 days ago direct from KW Germany, so as car sat in the air seemed like ideal time to do the rears.

Old shocks and hardly used H&R springs off, and new matched KW shocks and springs on, brakes bleed and just the front left to do tomorrow.

First impressions, brake peddle feel is excellent, really really good, much better than it was with GT fronts and drums rears, handbrake is awesome, goes from spinning wheel easy to full lock up on 3 clicks.

Took a couple of pics on phone.

sei_rear_calliper.jpg

sei_suspension.jpg
 
What KW's did you get... the front coilover set. Also how low are the H&R rear springs??

Im getting more and more temped to do the rear disk conversion...but i've got loads of other crap to fit yet so it'll have to wait
 
It's listed as KW Sports Suspension kit, no point in getting front only height adjustable suspension when you can't adjust the rear on what is a road car.

For some reason its listed on the website we bought from as a 35mm drop, but the actual KW box says its 40mm all round drop. The shocks are shorter than standard shocks, so we measured maximum compression and cut 20mm off the bump stops to assure they don't bottom out to quickly.

The H&R springs are 35mm drop which if used for standard shocks is maximum I would recommend as any lower will be detrimental to there lifespan.

HTH

Aaron.
 
looks like a quality job there mate(y) im a really big fan of what youve done to this sei btw :worship: its what i want doing to mine

also have you had the sei on a RR? what sort of spec are you getting at the wheels/flywheel?(y)

cheers

OxO
 
It's listed as KW Sports Suspension kit, no point in getting front only height adjustable suspension when you can't adjust the rear on what is a road car.

yea,i know what you mean,i have the coilover set(I didn't buy them) and ive never adjusted them:rolleyes:

How huch are the plates for the rear disks??
 
looks like a quality job there mate(y) im a really big fan of what youve done to this sei btw :worship: its what i want doing to mine

also have you had the sei on a RR? what sort of spec are you getting at the wheels/flywheel?(y)

cheers

OxO

108bhp 100lb ft, can't remember where in the rev range they are produced, but its something like peak power 6000rpm and peak torque 4000rpm, which for an engine with only a s/s manifold, exhaust, and induction kit is a good return on the standard 95bhp 94lb ft as it is in the Stilo, or 99bhp and 97lb ft as found in teh Panda 100hp and before anyone says it 100bhp its not its 100PS. So more than a hi-boost VAD turbo 1108 had according to there literature when new which was 104bhp and 109lb ft.

Performance as measured with a Race Technology AP22 is 0-60 in 8.2secs on old close to wear bar Yoko's and tired shocks, may give it another run now on new suspension and Conti's and may get faster with better traction off the line.
 
awww, my car has lost one of its exclusive to the UK features :(

lookin good. instead of using washers, if you can get hold of punto gt rear dust shield - that'll do the job better i think.
 
awww, my car has lost one of its exclusive to the UK features :(

lookin good. instead of using washers, if you can get hold of punto gt rear dust shield - that'll do the job better i think.

Cheers mate.

What unique feature was it? What was that brackets made by Jordan? or having 240mm discs on rear? Cos my old CInq and Emma's turbo have 227mm Uno Turbo rear callipers/discs & hubs as does Blu's Turbo so can't be disc conversion alone.

Yeah the dust shield could work, but don't need it, never had any issues on Emma's car with no dust shields and they have been on well over a year now though on that car the UT brackets did not need any spacing to be bang on centre on the disc.
 
it was the 240mm rear discs, afaik - no other car in the UK had them :)

i didn't mean put the dust sheilds on there to be used as dust sheilds, simply to space the mounts the correct amount instead of using washers.
 
aw, now i feel a bit less special.

i thought you had 227mm on the rear like everyone else, sorry!

(which its daft, because thinking back i KNOW you have 240mm rears because you helped me with getting the bits needed to get the brackets made up, and that came off a Punto GT.)

i'll just go sit back in me corner now!
 
Thinking about doing the suspension and brakes on my Cinq, and quite like what I see in this thread.

Aaron, are the KW's are big improvement over what comes stock, Whats the ride and handling like after installing the kit?

Just had a blast on google and noticed on one site they are £311. Is this how much you paid or is there somewhere else that stocks them? as I noticed you said they arrived from Germany.

Also, how much of a difference does the 240mm have on the back over the 227mm or whatever the size most people people use? Is the custom bracket the same or is it slightly bigger due to the bigger disc?

Cheers,
MiG
 
OK suspension. Not really had a chance to try them out properly, but roll is reduced and the damp and rebound is much improved on these gas shocks over the standard ones. The rears are shorter by about 20mm the fronts the same length as standard but the piston is notable a fair bit thicker.

I found the standard suspension to be pretty awful, the H7R springs not only dropped the car but improved roll considerable and TBH on a nearer standard car would have been good, but we felt on the improved performance of this car a better all round set up would improve things again, and it has moved the game on. We paid pretty much what you did from a UK company but all they do is then order direct from KW Germany as they are a reseller, so do not stock the items themselves, like many companies now, we got ours in 3 days.

The reason for the 240mm disc is two fold, one it means you use front Cento discs on rear, so the offset is not changed so you can reuse standard hub, though these need custom brackets to make them, see group buy. As for callipers well anything from Punto GT to what we used Marea 155HLX or whatever its called fit though they are bigger than the Uno Turbo callipers we have also used, so again like the front callipers there are at least two different types on the go by Fiat. So we have the turbo Cinq with the earlier smaller Punto GT callipers and UT rears, and the Sei on late spec bigger Putno GT callipers and later/diff spec bigger rears. These cars unlike earlier UT do not use separate brackets to attach the calliper.

Why previous conversion's including the two I have done used 227mm discs as this forms part of the conversion using the brackets found on UT's, these brackets are NLA and as such difficult to track down unless someone is scrapping a UT. You can't just bolt on the discs though without using UT hubs as well to get the correct offset, not only for the brake disc but for the wheel, so what at first may seem a cheaper option of getting scrapped UT stuff can be more expensive as hubs are not cheap at about £35 each as most of the hubs off UT fall to bits when you remove them, well 3 out of 4 of mine did, so we bought new, plus often the callipers are in need of refurbishment, we got all four of ours done at BigRedd.

The custom brackets are really similar to the genuine UT brackets only the calliper mounts are spaced out about 10mm or so to clear the bigger brake disc, if going to trouble of getting them made, it makes sense to get them made to fit the 240mm disc.

It should be noted that the Panda 100hp, and new 500 Sport run this set up 257mm front vented discs and 240mm solid rear discs and both these car tip scales at 930+ kgs, so on cars weighing about 800-820kgs makes them stop very well, vast improvement on the frankly awful standard set up, oh and you get a wonderful handbrake.

I hope that all makes sense and reads OK as just sticking down what I can remember.
 
those calipers are different to mine, but did you have the same issue where the bleed nipple was not at the highest point, the brake hose was. this makes it not so easy to bleed. how did you get round that?

am probably going to take mine down to mate at a garage and have it all pressure bled. i'm still not 100% happy with the pedal feel in mine.
 
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