Suzuki Alto Works – Big Brakes 2.0

When I get an idea in my head, it’s very hard to make it go away without giving it a satisfying conclusion.

I wasn’t happy with how close I was last time, but ultimately failed at upgrading my brakes.

Let’s recap, the HA36S Alto Works and Turbo RS have dinky little 230mm rotors.

These are the same size as the previous model Alto Works back in 1998, when they were smaller and lighter. The Kei Works, about the same size and weight as an HA36S, was gifted the bigger 14V caliper brackets, and 257mm rotors from the Swift/Ignis shopping basket.

230mm is probably fine for stock power, and how you’d normally drive an Alto, but when you add more power and want to drive it hard, particularly on a fast track like my local one, the little standard brakes leave something to be desired.

There are a couple of suppliers out of Japan for bolt-on big brake kits, but after shipping we’re talking $500+NZD, which is madness. Silkroad makes the cheapest one, with a 255mm rotor and custom-designed bracket with joined bridge. You would also be limited to sourcing the replacement rotors from Silkroad in future.

The 14V brackets from a HT51S Swift/Ignis are a bolt on to the Alto, using the existing Alto calipers. These space the caliper out in order to use the bigger rotor.

This would all be nice and easy, except the Kei/Swift/Ignis rotors all have a different 49mm hat height, which pushes the rotor backward toward the strut. The causes unhappiness with the clearance for the caliper bracket.

You cannot alter the position of the caliper bracket since it’s mounted to the front of the knuckle. The solution is to either space the rotor out from the hub, use rotors from some Toyota (Cynos iirc) and machine the center bore out to the required 60mm (thanks to the weird stepped center bore on the hub), or find a pair of rotors that actually fit (an easier job said than done).

I hated the spaced-out rotor idea, everything became studcentric, including the rotors.

So the Suzuki rotors were a no-go. There was some discussion about centering rings and things, but it all became too complex.

The Toyota rotor option was also a no-go, I don’t like the idea of having to machine consumable items in order to fit.

All I was left with then, other than buying the Silkroad kit from Japan, was to find a rotor that met the criteria. This led to many hours of trawling through every single rotor catalogue and website I could find.

Eventually, finally, I had a breakthrough on some random website in Europe. Enter, the Chery J1 from China.

By some bizarre miracle, this horrible little shopping box of dubious quality was reported as having the perfect rotors. 257mm diameter, 17mm thickness, 60mm CB, 4×100 PCD and a 44mm hat height. The height is 1mm different from the Alto brakes, but otherwise everything else is perfect.

Had I found the secret sauce?

For future reference, the OE part number was S21-3501075. Apparently it’s also used on some Mercedes, I don’t know what though. After some more digging, I found RDA in Aus actually makes rotors for these too, using the P/N RDA8423. I’m sure other suppliers are out there, the EU sites have a few options.

Anyway, thanks to the help of a great chap on the Oldschool forum, I managed to get my hands on a pair of front rotors from a Chery J1, from Pick A Part, spiders and all.

They were used, and rusty, but were barely worn, didn’t have a lip and still measured the full 17mm thickness.

I pulled the Alto in, jacked one side up and got to work fitting the Chery rotor and 14V bracket.

Promising. How does the centering look?

Perfect. No clearance issues, the rotor is centered, and it’s all hubcentric.

The next task, now that I knew it fit, was to have the rotors skimmed by a local company. They came back looking very good. The guy did audibly shudder when he asked what they were off and I answered Chery J1… He didn’t ask further questions when I said not to worry since they weren’t going back on one. Probably already wrote me off as a wrong’un.

Before I could fit them I had to prep and paint the 14V brackets. The Alto comes with red calipers and brackets, because racecar, but the standard shopping basket models were unpainted. The mismatch made my eye twitch.

I cleaned them with brake cleaner and then wire brushed the heck out of them before hitting them with a few coats of VHT caliper paint, focusing on the visible areas once fitted.

After a couple of days to cure, it was time to fit everything once and for all.

The Alto once again returned to the garage, this time both sides were raised

The pile of bits was laid out for prep

I removed the slider pins, which were all free, and cleaned and regreased them with some ceramic brake grease. One of the pins had a tear in the boot, so I later stole the boot from the standard Alto pin on one side.

Interestingly I noticed the Swift pins were all solid, whilst one pin on each side of the Alto has rubber bushings on it to allegedly reduce noise and vibration

The pad retaining clips were cleaned up and refitted

The wheels were removed, and I began the removal of the standard brakes

Remember to hang the caliper securely so it doesn’t stress the hose

The old rotor was pressed off with a bolt

I then cleaned the hub bore up with a wire wheel on the drill and added some copper grease so it won’t rust into place. You can see the stupid CB step here

The big rotor was then slid into place with a wheel nut to hold it, and the 14V bracket bolted on and torqued to the required 85NM. The Alto pads were then slipped into the 14V brackets, with new grease.

I found my calipers were missing whatever this insert is, so I stole it from the Swift calipers

The caliper was then fitted and the slider bolts torqued to 26NM

The difference in the size of the rotor doesn’t look huge there because the caliper is still close to the center hat, but what isn’t immediately obvious is that the hat has a larger diameter on the bigger rotors. If the hat had the same diameter as stock the caliper would be a long way from the hat.

With my braided lines, the hose is a little tighter to reach the caliper than stock, but it’s not stretched or strained, it just takes a little wiggle to get the caliper into place without pulling on the hose.

Rinse and repeat for the other side of the car, and the brakes are done. They really do push the caliper out and make a pretty good visible difference.

Now I needed to give them a pounding to bed the pads into the fresh surface and make sure they weren’t going to fall to bits the first time I tried to stop.

I took the car on a gentle drive out to some open back roads and set on my usual break-in procedure. Turn the wick up to high, and do a series of 100kph-20kph near-stops. I ended up doing 4 or 5 of these, getting the brakes hot enough that I could smell them, and then cruised around for a bit with minimal breaking (and no stopping!) to let them cool off.

After a little bit of cooling off, I stopped and checked the wheel nut torque, and grabbed some cheeky photos.

So, how do the new brakes feel? Well, the brake feel on the Alto has never been amazing, it’s a bit soft and vague for my liking, even with the braided lines and new fluid, but it is an economy car at the end of the day. The new brakes haven’t fixed that, but they have made the pedal feel like it’s doing more when you do press it.

If you really stomp on it, the car will pitch forward on its nose and shed speed like an anchor was dropped. If you press them hard enough the ABS will kick in and remind you it could lock the wheels if it wanted. Even on the track I had a hard time braking hard enough to hit ABS with the stock brakes.

Very happy with the upgrade so far. Was it cheaper than the Silkroad kit? Yes, by a couple of hundred dollars. Would it have been cheaper if I didn’t buy used Swift rotors that didn’t fit, and used Chery rotors that needed skimming too? Yes.

Knowing what I know now, you could grab a couple of 14V caliper brackets from an old Swift or Ignis from Pick A Part, order some new RDA rotors and away you go.

I’ll be driving the Alto around a bit in the next week or two just to shake it down before the trackday at the end of the month and make sure we’re all good. I can’t wait, this thing should be a weapon on track now.