Manual vs power brakes?

[avchz]

Currently I’m doing a LS swap on my 67 camaro. The car has 6 piston wilwoods up front and 4 piston on the rear. Before the LS I had a big block in it creating 14-15 inches of vacuum with a dual diaphragm booster with a 1 inch MC. With a stock style proportioning valve. I had too many close calls with this setup. Also can never get the wheels to lock up. I was thinking of getting a 1-1/8 wilwood or baer MC with a adjustable proportioning valve or the Detroit speed setup that I’ve seen mark stielow use. But I’ve seen a lot guys on here have great success with a manual brake setup. 7/8 or 15/16 MC seems to be the route many you are taking. Pedal feel? What’s your guy’s opinion? Im open minded. Either or I’m gonna have to redo the hard lines. This is a street car. Thanks.

[timopajala]

I had the same problem and installed gen 5 camaro booster and now the brakes are awesome

[GoodysGotaCuda]

I have manual brakes, similar to yours with 6p/4p Wilwoods. I have no problem hauling the car down or locking up tires, but the trade off on a manual set up is it is at the expense of pedal travel. I have to really lay into the pedal to get the aggressive stopping power.

That would be great for predictable braking, like a road course or autox, the feel is outstanding. It is not as great for unpredictable driving, like city traffic where you sometimes need brakes...NOW. The long pedal stroke seems to shake my confidence when in traffic.

That said, I would be interested in going from manual to power at some point to mitigate some of the pedal travel and give me a little faster response. But that's just me being picky. For what it's worth, I started with a 7/8" master, it was too much stroke, now I have a 15/16" and it's a little better. 1" would probably be too much force needed.

[Bugzilla]

I love the manual setup on my car. Same 6p/4p Wilwood combo as you guys. But, my car is probably half the weight of most cars out there. So my pedal feel is going to be a lot different. I think I went with a 3/4" master. The pedal feel is fantastic but it does take some time to get used to the pedal travel. Its not bad by any means but you just have to get used to it. Has no problem locking up all 4 either. No way I will ever switch back to a power assist setup in any car.

[avchz]

I had the same problem and installed gen 5 camaro booster and now the brakes are awesome

Do you have a part number? Did you use a adjustable proportioning valve?

[avchz]

I have manual brakes, similar to yours with 6p/4p Wilwoods. I have no problem hauling the car down or locking up tires, but the trade off on a manual set up is it is at the expense of pedal travel. I have to really lay into the pedal to get the aggressive stopping power.

That would be great for predictable braking, like a road course or autox, the feel is outstanding. It is not as great for unpredictable driving, like city traffic where you sometimes need brakes...NOW. The long pedal stroke seems to shake my confidence when in traffic.

That said, I would be interested in going from manual to power at some point to mitigate some of the pedal travel and give me a little faster response. But that's just me being picky. For what it's worth, I started with a 7/8" master, it was too much stroke, now I have a 15/16" and it's a little better. 1" would probably be too much force needed.

After reading your comment I’m a little discouraged of the manual brake setup haha. I like having a confident braking and a confident pedal feel. I thought the only trade off would be the firm pedal. There are a lot options out there, a lot money to be spent. Detroit speed booster and MC looks like a good option. They state “late model braking” on the product.

[John McIntire]

I'd like to do manual brakes on my car. If you do a search on here on this topic, you'll see that many people run them and love it.

It all comes down to matched components. I'd call Wilwood and give them all your info and specs and let them tell you what size MC t run.

[vette427-sbc]

I'd like to do manual brakes on my car. If you do a search on here on this topic, you'll see that many people run them and love it.

It all comes down to matched components. I'd call Wilwood and give them all your info and specs and let them tell you what size MC t run.

This.
Im a manual brake lover, and you can get that braking confidence and feel, you just have way less room for parts matching error.
My .02: get the most aggressive pad you think you can run on the street, and don’t forget to bed the brakes properly.

[65 drop top]

You really need to know your calipers piston area before you can pick a master cylinder

[Chad-1stGen]

I ran power brakes on my 68 Camaro for 20k miles and manual brakes now for 40k miles. The confidence and braking performance on the manual brakes is way better than when I had power. As someone noted above matching components matters a LOT. So does pad compound.

I have the wilwood superlite 6p front caliper and 4p rear caliper matched to a 1" wilwood master cylinder. A smaller bore will reduce pedal feel in exchange for longer stroke and vice versa. With the Wilwood superlite calipers the sweet spot seems to be either 15/16 or 1"

For autocross and street driving my favorite pad is the BP-20 precisely because it requires the most pedal effort. It's not going to leave your leg sore at the end of a long drive but you can notice the extra effort required. But when driving hard in autocross I want it to be a little harder to reach tire lock up. A nice side benefit is that they produce way less dust are gentle on the rotors and last forever.

Put a set of BP-30's on or Polymatrix B's and the brakes will grab hard and work well. Noticeably less pedal effort than the BP-20's and not annoyingly harder than power brakes. You will see more dust though.

[FLYNAVY53]

This.
Im a manual brake lover, and you can get that braking confidence and feel, you just have way less room for parts matching error.
My .02: get the most aggressive pad you think you can run on the street, and don’t forget to bed the brakes properly.

This! I'd also throw in that correct pedal ratio is critical in a manual brake set up. I'm currently running manual brakes in my '64 Corvette, and they work relatively well.... my problem is that the 5:1 pedal ratio is what you would look for in a boosted application. Eventually I plan to install a Wilwood pedal set up with a 7:1 ratio which should make for a really good manual brake package....all of which fits in a 15" wheel.

[79 Camaro]

One thing to consider about power versus non-power brakes is who may drive the car. My wife likes to drive my hot rods once and awhile. I've used manual brakes set up with Kore3 help and they worked great. Just had to lean on the pedal harder. Had a hydro-boost setup from Paul at Hydratech. They were great. My current set up on my 68 C10 is a C5 booster, 2002 master with C5 brakes all around. Works great. I do have 15" of vacuum. Small cammed LS1.