The front brakes on the car were already an upgrade over standard being Astra 2.0 calipers. I did consider replacing them, but I had always been happy with how they worked and multi piston calipers were an expense too far at that time. As were new Astra calipers or refurbished ones so I decided to rebuild my own. They were very rusty to start with, but cleaned up very nicely with effort. I put new pistons in them along with new seals, I was quite surprised how simple design a brake caliper is. I don't know why I expected them to be more complicated, I just assumed they would be. The bleed screws are stainless steel ones, can't be putting in anything that will rust!
With the carriers (and some other bits) I'd experimented with different ways to remove rust. Leaving one in a bowl full of vinegar, and the other in a bowl of cola. Both removed rust pretty well after leaving them a couple of days, but the metal would rust over again exteremly quickly. I find it better to phyically attack the rust using wire wheels and polycarbide discs and don't stop untill theres no dark bits just clean metal.
The drum plates were restored to as new condition, I even painted the bare metal of the drum cylinders. The unions on the brake lines didn't all come loose without a fight and a couple ended up getting rounded off. Trying to cut and reflare the steel lines proved impossible so I set about making my own. I used the originals as a template to work from, for the most part I found the bending tool I bought too awkward to use and found my thumb did a much better job. I used stainless steel unions on my new lines and bought union spanners which I didn't realise existed before to fit them back in the car.
I had previously bought a four branch manifold to replace the standard SR set up, I soon regretted doing this as it didn't peform as well in my opinion. Since I'd foolishly recycled the original manifold I set about searching for a suitable replacement, which proved rather difficult. I spent months looking but eventually found a 4-2-1 manifold. Its a much better design, closer to the original one but no doubt lighter being made of steel rather than a mix of steel and cast iron.