The rear pads are a bit more difficult. The pads are held in by a locking plate and spring clips. We had to tap out the locking plate to get the pads freed up.The rear pads are even more worn out than the fronts! We swapped the retaining springs over, added a bit of grease, and dropped the new pads back in place.The rear pistons are the rotating type to work with the handbrake. These need to be wound back in when replacing the pads. Normally, we’d remove the caliper and use a pair of pliers to wind the piston back into place. The caliper is very difficult to remove; the upper mounting bolts are an odd size and the bolts on the upright don’t free the caliper fully. Fortunately the spanner for our angle grinder was the perfect size to wind the piston back with the caliper in place.The rear pads were a bit of a pain to replace, but we were eventually successful. Just like the front, we inspected the rear calipers and rotors and found them to be perfectly serviceable so they were not replaced.To top off our brake work, we decided to flush the entire brake system with MotoIQ’s favorite Motul RBF600 brake fluid. The high boiling point is the biggest selling point. The low maintenance is another. We swapped out the old fluid with the new and that buttoned up the brake work. We wrapped up the job by bedding in the pads to Project Mu’s specifications.
With new pads, plenty of rotor life, racing brake fluid, and stainless steel lines, we’ve pretty well wrapped up the brakes on the Cappuccino. For the type of driving this Cappuccino will see, something crazy like a big brake kit isn’t necessary: The whole skill of driving a Cappuccino hard is to carry the momentum through corners, scrubbing minimal speed. Really, the brakes are mostly used for weight transfer as opposed to actual stopping, so braking is mostly done in quick dabs before the corner. A big brake kit is only really needed for a full track Cappuccino and would require a lot of engineering (since no manufacturer currently makes a big brake kit for the Cappuccino). In fact for the OEM tires the Cappuccino has, these brakes are actually overkill. This is a non-ABS car and the slick commuter tires this car is currently cursed with make it really easy to lock up the brakes during hard braking. Good thing we’ve got a sticky tire upgrade waiting in the wings…
