Carpokes Porsche Forum

No real question here, just venting.

1988.5 951 w/M030 package (so effectively a Turbo S w/ K26/8).

Used the holiday to get some wrench therapy. Pulled the front hubs to play around with spacers, and realized for the first time that my M030 black radial calipers are mounted via an adapter (Racer's Edge, I think) to the traditional axial mounts of a non-M030 spindle. I've had the car since 2011, but am only recently really wrenching myself, so for all I know I could have procured the car this way. At some point some unscrupulous mechanic must have swapped out the rare spindles for the standard ones with adapter. I suppose it makes no functional difference with the adapters and even opens up the possibility of bigger brakes down the road, but I'm still very annoyed.

It's low on my list of fixes, but at some point would like to get it back to original. If anyone looking to do a big brake kit wants to trade with me (plus some cash for the value difference), let me know.

I would double check you've got the right calipers, measure pistons size n stuff. Also the style of Porsche lettering matters, yours should both be embossed cast on the caliper not stickers.

Most likely they were changed because of a spindle and/or hub issue. The hubs are different, but you could put a 3mm (iirc) spacer underneath the rotor to use a standard hub on an M030 spindle. I would love proper spindles/hubs on my car which is getting M030 caliper converted but objectively sticking with the *known* spindles/hubs of my car is smarter. I know they had never been tracked on until I owned it, which is a high abuse case scenario.

Swapping spindles and hubs would be a very nasty thing for any mechanic to do, so I agree it was probably done because something got damaged and it was much, much cheaper to install non M030 parts. The M030 spindles are still available for $2300 ish each, plus the hubs. Ouch. I paid $500 for a used set of M030 spindles and hubs way back in 2002. Hope they never need to be replaced! I'm running these on my S2 with 928 GTS Big Black calipers I had painted red years ago.

Depending on the condition of your turbo I'd be inclined to try and source the correct spindles and hubs from a wrecked vehicle. I'm sure they would still be expensive.