AD22VF Brake Upgrade

Written by Omni

This is a how to guide on installing larger front brakes. It’s a simple process and if you know how to/or have taken off the hubs of a car you need not read any further. In the following sample I replaced my stock Nissan Exa front brakes, with the larger AD22VF brake setup from the Nissan n15 pulsar SSS. These brakes are also available on the NX-2000/NX(-R), and the Pulsar GTI-R. Instead of just changing the caliper and rotor I figure that it’s probably a better idea to change the whole hub as the bearings in a 15 year old car are probably on their way out. Also it’s a lot easier to do it this way, instead of changing over only the rotor and caliper.

The left hub/brake setup is from the Exa. The right hand side is the AD22VF setup. Notice the larger rotor surface area, as well as the larger caliper. Also they still remain the same stud pattern.

Anyway enough of this lets get dirty!

Tools needed are:

Mallet (Hammer), Pliers either needle nose or normal, a ratchet, 17mm, 19mm, 22mm 32mm sockets, ball joint remover, jack, car stands, brake fluid and an extension.

Process:

·                    First thing to do is take off your drive shaft nut. It should be a big 32mm socket. After completing this loosen your wheel nuts/locks and then the wheel.

·                    Jack your car up and setup the car stands (Remember safety first). Now take your wheels off.

·                    Using your 17mm socket loosen the 2 bolts on the strut, but leave them in to hold the hub in place. I found that at this point it’s easier to remove the control arm ball joint from the side of the hub.

·                    To remove the control arm, you need to first take out the split pin holding the crown nut in place. Using your 17mm socket remove the crown nut, and then use your ball joint remover to pop the nut out of the hub.

·                    At this point your can take off your brake line from the back of the caliper using a 12mm ring spanner.

·        Now remove the 2 nuts holding the hub to the strut, pull the hub down and take out the drive shaft. For those that are not sure how to do this, don’t be too gentle with the CV joints. You need to bend the CV joint at the CV boot, which will allow you to pull out the drive shaft from the wheel hub.

This is what you should be looking at now.

·        Now is the time to take off the bottom nut. Using a 22mm socket take off the bottom nut. Again using the ball joint remover pop this nut out of the wheel hub. The hub should now easily come away from the car.

·        Now the replacing of the AD22VF hub is the exact opposite of this process. And the finished product should look something like this:

Cheers and good luck with this. Remember to bleed your brakes after you finish bolting everything up. Total time taken is 2 hours. However this time was achieved using air tools which help speed up the process. Also I paid $250 for the complete hubs (pair) from a wrecker in Sydney. Find an honest one and stick with them. A lot of wreckers told me that I needed to upgrade my brake master cylinder to use these brakes. Also there is a lot of confusion over weather or not to use non-ABS calipers or ABS calipers (Nissan brought out the Pulsar SSS with both). You can use either, as the only difference in the 2 calipers is the ABS ones come with an ABS sender unit, but you can remove this. You can further upgrade this brake setup using premium brake pads, and slotted or cross drilled and slotted rotors.

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