Suzuki Club UK

hi new to the forum bought myself a 2000 jlx and it needs some work! firstly the suspension at the front is badly rusted so thought no probs yeah till I saw the price of wishbones! so managed to get them for a mere £95 a piece! cos the old ones were to shot even to make it worth while repairing, today I pulled a wheel off to find the brakes are in similar goosed state great! my question so far then is are there any other calipers that will fit that I might be able to pick up easier/cheaper? kinda feel after what ive spent on wishbones ball joints and anti roll links that im in a bit deep to back out now! its a shame cause aside from a very minor patch needed to the chassisjust below front body mount , some rusty wings and the usual seatbelt mount boot rot its in pretty good shape what was intended to be a cheap run around (sigh) is now turning into a major project! any advice where to get reasonable priced parts much appreciated fowks

for the calipers it might be cheaper to source a rebuild kit and do it yourself

to be honest I think they are beyond the home rebuild stage! be doing well just to get the pipes off!

I drove 50 miles with brake fittings like this and this is the 'good' side this might be salvageable but the other side the banjo and bleed nipple are as rusty as that brake hose don't hold out much hope for extraction! one thing ive noticed when looking on ebay is a lack of drivers side bits do they all rust out worse on this side or what?

The actual cast caliper can be cleaned up easy enough. 99% sure brakes international can supply all the seals and pistons.

Dave at Llama 4x4 can provide new hoses.

would grand vitara calipers fit? they seem to be easier to get, or were the same calipers used on other models?

be really really careful with the bleed nipple and WD-40 the living s**t out of them!

I'd get the blowtorch on that and get plenty of heat into the caliper before I tried undoing the brake line or bleed nipple. The brakes aren't too difficult to rebuild, the pistons can be difficult to remove so it may be worth popping them out before you undo the lines, just make sure that you don't get brake fluid everywhere when you do that. I use a pair of G clamps to make sure that they move out evenly.

to be honest id rather just replace them rather than bugger about trying to sort them, could spend hours (and ££) on them and still prove no good, got enough work on with the welding and suspension, it's sitting there taxed and tested and I cant use it id rather just swap on decent or mebe even new calipers (I have found ones for between £50/60) but id rather see if I can save a wee bit first before I go splashing out, done a lot of that on it recently

I may have a set of Vitara calipers I rebuilt a while ago. I can't remember if I rebuilt them, or just bought the parts - I've rebuilt about 4 sets, and ended up only using the standard SJ ones front, Rover 200's rear.

I could dig through and see what I've got if you'd like?