Well, the weather was reasonable today and I didn't have anything particularly pressing to do, so finally stopped procrastinating and fitted the 314mm disks, pads and calipers I bought last month for my wife's Signum.
No pics (sorry) but I'm sure you've all seen much prettier installations by now from other members, as I decided to leave the calipers unpainted. I was in two minds whether to paint them or not, but as they're vitually brand new and didn't need a clean-up, I decided the standard metal-look would be more discrete.
More useful than pics, I'll instead share tips for those of you who undertake this in the future. Get a looooong bar to use as an extension for your ratchet when trying to undo the caliper retaining bolts. I had an 8 foot scaffold pole and it worked a treat.
Also have a backup for essential tools - I had a Draper 100-piece socket set that I've had for 10-12 years, and the Halfords 150-piece set I bought a month ago has been fairly redundant until now as I always use the Draper; but after 2 pieces of the Draper broke during this job, the Halfords set was invaluable.
I wasn't looking forward to disconnecting the brake hose from the old caliper and was expecting brake fluid to come pouring out, but clamping the brake hose worked fine. I found it useful to have a bucket under the wheel arch and let the old caliper fall into that along with what little brake fluid came out, and then used the same bucket when bleeding the brakes.
Bleeding the brakes afterwards, using an Eezibleed kit was simplicity itself, which was a pleasant surprise, as I'd last used one of those kits over a decade ago when none of the pieces would seal properly and brake fluid went everywhere. The reliability of the Eezibleed kit seems to have improved so no such drama this time.
End result - even before the brakes have started to bed-in, I can feel that they have more power, and thankfully no soft brake pedal dramas or bulging brake hoses.
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