Virgo alloys vs my front calipers :-(

I'm not sure if you are asking if you can fit rear calipers to the front but if you are then this would be highly dangerous because the pad size on the rears is much, much smaller and would not cope with the greater braking force required for front brakes. There was different makes of brake fitted to these cars and it is quite normal for them to be a different make fitted front and rear. My car has Bendix fronts and ATE rear. It may be that the physical overall size of the different makes of front caliper may vary, depending on braking system specification (with / without abs, solid or vented disks). I'm sure I have seen an article in one of the magazines about this a couple of years ago.

Thanks everyone, thought as much. I just wasn't sure whether someone might have put some different calipers on the front for some reason, but as you say they're probably there for a reason. Regards Ben

Mmmm, just done a bit more reading on Turbobricks & a guy over there managed to get some virgos on his 760 using 5mm spacers from Halfords. I quite fancy running on the virgos for a while if poss while I sort out the cash etc to get the sirius' refinished. Will have to look into the spacer idea as there is 5mm free on the bolt. Again, if anyone has a lovely set of 5mm spacers they'd like to get rid of let me know :-) Ben

Virgos 

If those virgos are from a 240 I am reasonably sure the inset is 25 in stead of 20 for the 740 so you should fit 5mm spacers all round. Even more to fit alloys from the front-wheel-drives.

I was going to ask "why not use spacers?" as well

Virgo offset 

Revisiting this thread I can now say for sure that the 740 offset (on eg Pholus) is 25mm but the Virgos are 20mm, so if you used 5mm spacers the contact patch would be 10mm further out. I still don't know if this would let you clear the calipers, but I'm about to find out soon!

Hi I'm sure I have heard about this before and The fix can be done three ways.The first is grind part of the caliper away! BUT I can't strees enough that doing so would be at your risk,Some guy did it to an old sized caliper then once it fitted well he continued to grind in the same spot to see just how close he was to making it leak! Well apparently it had a lot of metal left and he was confident that it did not make the caliper weak. The second method is beyond most of us as it involves placing the wheel hub into a lathe and turning a samall amount from inside the rim. The third is apparently adding spacers!But when I offered up a virgo to a 740 front end it looked as if it was the diameter of the inner part of the wheel that clashed with the caliper.But I didn't think to hold the wheel away from the hub to see if it would clear. I'm really looking forward to someone here giving us the correct info as I wouldn't mind fitting virgo's to my 740. Regards Brian.

I've seen Virgos fitted to a 7xx in the past, but my understanding is that on ABS-fitted cars the calipers interfere with the braking system in some fashion. There was a style of wheel fitted to the 7xx that looked like a Virgo but with centre caps covering the lug nuts. It might be worth measuring the INTERNAL diameter of the Virgos and comparing that with the existing wheels' internal diameter.If the Virgos are smaller, then they probably won't fit. The rear calipers on the 7xx are not interchangeable with the fronts - the discs are of different size and the plumbing would need to be revised, including the fitment of a new master cylinder as the volume of fluid required to actuate the calipers would be different.