Corvette Z06 6 piston caliper adjustment

[bmcgauhey]

I just purchased a set of ATS AFX uprights/spindles and am now looking at my brake choices. I really like the GM Corvette stuff and have been looking very hard at the Core3 14" Rotor and Z06 6 piston caliper kit.

Here is my question though. I have looked at the other systems out there (Baer, wildwood etc...) and I noticed that in similar brake kits the calipers use shims on the caliper mounting bracket at the upright mounting surface to center the caliper to the rotor. Is this the same for the Corvette 6 piston caliper? I have not seen any articles which address this and it appears that the calipers just bolt directly to the uprights and that's that. Is this correct? or is there shimming involved in the installation process of these calipers?

If this is correct that the calipers just bolt to the uprights without shimming it to be precisely centered to the rotor, if so, then why do the other companies shim theirs? Is centering the rotor to the caliper really that important or is there just an acceptable tolerance range that the Z06 caliper just falls within when bolted directly to the upright?

Question 2, I have never used calipers which use 6 separate brake pads, how do these pads install and what are the "pins" involvement with the pads (how's it work?). Are the 6 separate brake pads the only ones that can be used in those calipers or can you also use a solid one piece brake pad like any other caliper?

I hope I am not over thinking this, but I am just not familiar and looking for insight. Thanks for any input.

[CanyonKiller]

I have the zo6 brakes on my car and I used the Kore3 kit and no shims where necessary. I have put wilwood brakes on another vehicle and the caliper wouldn't even fit on the rotor without shims on the bracket. Maybe other companies need shims due to the fact they only have a few calipers and minor adjustments are needed to fit every car in their catalog. Those pins are what hold the brake pads into the caliper. There is a small cut out on the sides that match up with it and anti-rattle clips on the bottom. They can be a real pain to get them back in if you take them out. I believe EBC makes a one piece pad that you have to remove the caliper to install them. I think I'm going to try those next and see if its easier.

[andrewb70]

I have the AFX spindles and C6 Z06 calipers. No shims. The caliper fits perfectly over the rotor. I think you can credit the excellent engineering work done at ATS when they were designing the AFX spindles. ATS designed the spindles just like an OEM part, with the intention of using stock C5 brake components. I think the reason that other companies use shims is because their rotors aren't precisely built to a specific application, so minor adjustments are needed.

Andrew

[bmcgauhey]

Thanks for the replies. That's a big reason I want to go with the GM stuff, millions in engineering behind it, easy to find parts and reasonably priced for comparable items, can't see where I could go wrong. Thanks for your time.

[csouth]

As Andrew said, the GM stuff fits perfectly with the ATS spindles. My car is not on the road yet, but I chose the Hawk HPS one piece for my Z06 calipers. From what I understand, the 6 pin/puck design was put in place to allow removal of the brake pads without removing the caliper. I've never seen it done myself and lots of time the pins get frozen in place.

[Apogee]

There's also a difference between a spindle with a unitized hub and therefore fairly static brake offset dimension versus a spindle pin and hub arrangement where errosion of the inner wheel bearing mating surface can wear, plus there are just more variables with a serviceable hub type system, hence the need for shims at times. As with anything, there are tolerances...while ideally the calipers would be perfectly centered over the rotor, even the OE applications like the Corvette allow for +/-.5mm [+/-.02"] per PBR's specifications.

As for your pad questions, several manufacturers now offer 1-piece pad kits for the PBR M-Series C6 Z06/GS calipers including Hawk and Carbotech for sure, I'm not sure about EBC. We've had very good luck with the 1-piece pads and generally recommend them for the more aggressive applications if the added cost isn't too much of an issue. In addition to slightly more pad volume, you get redundant retention since you have several pins locating the pad versus just two locating each pad-let. We typically remove the calipers to swap pads anyway since it's two fasteners versus a bunch of pins, so there's no real down side that we've seen to this point.

Tobin
KORE3