Alcon Calipers – Trying to Make Them Work

By: Bob Goodson
June 21, 2021

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Previously we had purchased some Alcon B Type calipers for the race car.  This is what they look like. 

We’ve got $550 in them shipped to us. The plan was to use them on the front. Upon further inspection these are a rear mount caliper.  That would explain why they were so cheap to buy.  Since they are a good quality caliper and we are into them for a low cost, we’ll just shelf them and save them for another day.  Heck, we may end up putting them on the rear of this car.  But, we’ve got to do some calculations if we do that.  That’s another conversation for another day.  

That brings us to the current state.  Since we can’t use those B type calipers on the front because the pistons are too small we set out to find another cheap source for Alcon calipers.  A brand new big brake kit is just not in our budget right now but we need to do this safely and right.  So the hunt was on. 

What you see in the picture above is a pair of calipers that we saw on Ebay. They were listed in separate auctions from separate sellers in different parts of the country. They were on there for a few weeks while in our watch list.  Actually, we had listed them in our watch list prior to finding out the gray Alcon B Type calipers weren’t going to work. 

So we started doing a deeper investigation of these two calipers.  We were able to determine that they were both the same caliper and have the same size pistons.  The application was for a BMW with a 14″ rotor.  The key was there had to be a left caliper and a right caliper because of the size of the pistons.  The left and right are not interchangeable.  They are side specific. 

We did our homework in looking at the calipers closely in the pictures of the auction.  Neither one of the sellers put the part number in there. So it wasn’t as easy as looking up the part numbers.  In our mind we thought, man there’s no way there is a left caliper and a right caliper listed separately.  There’s just no way!

So after investigating we found out that there were definitely a left caliper and a right caliper listed separately.  I’ll be a mothers uncle!  We found a set that might work for us.  

The original plan was to have brackets made for the Alcon B Type units we already had.  That means that we’re on the same path with the purchase of these yellow Alcon calipers.  And they fit perfectly in that they are yellow like our branding and logo. Win Win! 

So these calipers are currently at the machine shop where they are fabricating brackets to hold them to our Baer modified Foxbody Mustang spindles. 

Our purchase for these calipers cost us $635.43

That brings our total cost of the race car up to: $6295.92 

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