I am considering modifying my 2020 P400 Defender with Lucky8's Rear Caliper conversion kit to be able to fit 18" wheels. My goal is to eventually use the vehicle for towing a RV trailer and while I've seen others use this kit, I'm concerned about the impact on safety. We live in Colorado and there are many mountain passes that I would be climbing and descending.

I called Lucky8 to see what type of testing they've done with these but didn't get much in terms of a response. It was more or less, we haven't heard any negative feedback yet, which was not overly reassuring.

I am curious if others have made this modification and have issues or insights.

 

OneTen,
What size trailer are you planning to tow? Looking at the swap video, it looks like you retain the same pads and rotors and simply swap the calipers. The only real difference would be force applied by the caliper depending on piston size. If they can give you the diameter of the position, or a part number to look up, you could determine if the piston is larger, smaller, or the same size as the current caliper pistons.

 

I too am considering a Lucky8 caliper conversion kit. For me, moving to an 18" rim is entirely about tire choices. Folks bash the 19" rim, but the 20" rim looks no better at places like tirerack.com. There's all terrain on road, and all terrain off road, and if you want the latter, you need to overcome JLR not offering an 18" rim. When I saw the video from Lukcy8, as you say, it did seem straight forward. My question was this: why wouldn't a local JLR dealership be offering these Lucky8 conversion kits to existing P400 Defenders? Surely, the dealership be able to buy them wholesale (from Lucky8) and then sell them retail to owners, plus charge for labor. Maybe the local dealer would get a tire sale or an alignment sale as well. IDK, but if it's so easy, what has stopped JLR from doing it? There must be engineers within JLR that know selling a Defender as "off road" that can't fit a good selection of off road tires is a problem they should be fixing. Instead, I think JLR prioritized unrealistic top speeds, better than necessary acceleration, and big tow capacity from an engine that's not a V8; adding all three of those, we ended with a Defender having way too big of a rim for any off road all terrain tires. You can have a big rim with dynamic driving low profile tires, or you can have off road tires on smaller rims: but you can't have both, and somewhere within JLR, they must be know this. If JLR moderated tow rating and stopped pretending all Defender owners (intentionally not picking the V8) wanted to drive 130 mph, I think they would have continued to sell their 18"s in the lineup as it expanded to the P400. Without an 18" rim from JLR, I admit, these Lucky8 calipers do seem to be a great find. But with JLR not doing it for owners, I have to wonder why?