Road race brakes & future upgrades

[SHANE 73Z]

Hey all,



I have decided this year I will be addressing the braking system on my car. I am looking for opinions on available brake packages and the ability to upgrade them.

The car is a 1973 Camaro and currently uses a B-body spindle/12”x 1” 1LE 1-piece rotor upgrade. The rear currently has stock drums with aluminum drums. I am running Vintage Wheel Works V48 16”x 8” and don’t intend to change them anytime soon. This car is and always will be street driven and I am hoping to get 3-5 track days and about the same number of AutoX sessions as well.

My first idea was to replace the stock front calipers with the D52 aluminum SSBC twin piston (C4 38mm) and add a 12” x .81” rear kit from Baer or Touring classics. This would make for well balanced caliper bores and would be as large of rotors as I could fit in the wheels. Total cost: approx $1000

But I have been thinking that this setup doesn’t allow for any easy future upgrades. So I started shopping for Wilwoods. The best Wilwood has to offer for the front is a Forged Dynalite hub kit with 12” x .81” rotor. This kit looks similar to their drag kits in that it uses a plate on the back of the hub which the rotor bolts to. Their best rear kit with E-brake uses a Forged Dynalite w/1 Piece rotor with integral drum with the same dimensions as the front kit. Total cost: approx $1300

Their kits, although not what I initially was after, seem able to be upgraded fairly easy.
They dont offer a two-piece rotor for the rear kits but the bracketry is fairly straight forward to adjust spacing for wider rotors and better calipers.

All opinions are welcome.

Take care,
Shane

[USAZR1]

Have you looked at Baer's Touring rear disc kit with 12" rotors? Can probably get that kit for around $800 or less.

[Mean 69]

For the street, and even auto-crossing, a 1" front rotor width would be the minimum thickness I would even remotely consider. For open track events, yikes, I would not recommend this by any means. For certain, do the research, and find the thickest rotor that will fit inside your wheels. The diameter of the rotor, while bigger being better, should come secondary in a big way. For road racing, a 1.25" thick rotor is a good choice, slightly thinner for the street and a-x is probably okay (for instance, the C4 stuff is 1.10" up front).

For the rear, going thinner is fine, the overwhelming percentage of braking is done up front, but make certain you get a vented rotor (i.e. not a solid disc, not speaking of cross-drilling, etc). 0.810" is pretty typical for a rear setup on a street-type car.

I am coming to the conclusion pretty quickly that a good match between the M/C and calipers, in an effort to produce enough force onto the pads, is of primary importance, and that pads are critically important for a given application. Those that pads work well on the track, will most likely NOT work on the street because they need to be hot in order to grip. Similar deal on the other end, a street pad will not provide good behavior in most instances on the track due to fade when hot. Make sure that whatever calipers you choose have a WIDE variety of different compounds, ideally from multiple manufacturers.

Keep us posted!
Mark

[dennis68]

Shane, did deeper into Wilwood. The Jegs/Summit kits are crap. The "real" Wilwood kits from them direct have options up to 14" with 6-piston calipers.

[SHANE 73Z]

Mark,

You kinda confirmed my thinking. My budget for this is about 1500 tops for all the wheel mounted hardware and plumbing. With my budget limitations, I cannot justify going with less rotor mass for the sake of future upgrades.

I think I will stick with my original plan. The ultimate goal is Forged Superlites all around with 12x1.25 front & 12x1.00 rears. I do have intentions of changing pads for events.

I am also starting to understand why some people have trouble with manual brakes and corvette components. I will be using a CNC dual master/bias bar arrangement that works with the stock pedal. John at Johns Mustangs recommended dual 3/4" masters for the c4 bore calipers.

Clint,

I was quoted $590 for the rear touring kit from tbyrne motorsports Good till the middle of the month.

Dennis,

I will check Wilwood again. Everything I have seen thus far shows limited possibility for the second gens. I would go to someone like Precision brakes and have them build a bad A$$ kit, but the bucks arent that good this year!!!!

Thanks again,
Shane

[ks71z28]

You already have the 12" rotors up front. I have the same set up on my 71 Z. I Solo 1 and solo 2 ran my car with crap pads, but car was good until they cooked. I have stock Cadillac Seville 11" discs in rear. I have since upgraded to Howe aliminum dual pistons up front, which bolt on to b Body spindle with only a slight amount of grinding. They accept up to a 1.25" rotor, which a two piece can be had. In the rear I may put smaller Howe 2 piston calipers, but need to come up with a driveshaft parking brake set up. The best inprovement I made was the Hawk HP plus pads. I put a 4th gen master and adj prop valve, but I really think the gm 4 disc prop and cadillac master may have worked better. This set up has a lot of time involved, but little money. Don't spend money on worthless Bling Bling brakes, this stuff works. If you do upgrade to a non bolt on caliper, look at the PBR, road racers have used them a lot

[dennis68]

Here is a link to the Wilwood big brake kits. I didn't see them listed for the 70-81 Camaro but they are offered for the late 60's "A" body and "F" bady so they could easily be adapted to work on yours....call them. They probably have a bolt on system in the works or could get you what you needed to make them work.

[Stupidnewbie]

I've had the same idea, but rather than buy a kit from Wilwood I'm sourcing out the various parts from either Summit or from stock car parts houses. www.pitstopusa.com has 4-pot Wilwood forged dynalite calipers for $104 each! Rotors are like $40 a piece, as well. If you go to Wilwood's site they have diagrams and part listings for all their kits, then just search by part number on Summit racing. The necessary hubs and bolts and such are all there, you just have to know exactly what part # you need. I found that I can have an entire front brake setup, everything new, for about $500 even. I'll type up a parts list later, but it'll be for a 1st gen.

[CarlC]

You might want to take a look here, there's a lot of good info.

http://www.geocities.com/torkerscamaro/torker.html

For an all-around setup with your wheel package it's hard to beat a C4 13" front rotor and caliper, 93-96 Z28 rear caliper and rotor.

A C5 setup would be nice but I do not think it will fit your wheel. A 17" VWW yes, but not the 16's.

With a Hawk HPS or Porterfield pad, NAPA HD brake fluid, and some tuning the system will work surprisingly well and parts can be found anywhere. Mine have been beat on many times and have performed well.

[Ripper]

Hey Shane, long time!

May I suggest a different route to start with? Keep the old brakes, buy some quality pads (like hawks or different) and build a good cooling system for the front brakes. Why you need other brakes is because the old ones overheats, right? What many people tends to forget is why they're overheating... You have a cooling system for the engine and for the driver... why not for the brakes?

This is my coolingsystem and I never had problem with overheated brakes this summer!! And it only cost app. 50 bucks, so it's waaaay cheaper than bolting up a pair of wilwoods on your car. Every serious car that is used on the track, needs cooling, nomatter how big rotors or how many pistons the calipers has.. ;)

Some pics that might inspire you;

intake for the front:

and here you can see the cooling intakes before the front grill was installed..

[SHANE 73Z]

Ripper,

How ya doin buddy??? considering that I am going to stick with my budget brake setup for this year, I may have to get my rivet gun out.

Am I seeing correct? It looks like you ducted all the airflow to the radiator through your lower grille opening. Now that they are reproducing second gen spoilers, it may be time to carve the old one up.

Take care,
Shane

[Ripper]

I'm fine... Spending this spring full time in the garage and in front of the CAD computers... I'll show you in a couple of months or so

I would say that cooling for the brakes are the best upgrade you can get! I have many friends using smaller brakes than me (11" and 12") in cars about the same weight as mine and they have no problem with overheating.. It also has to do with your braking tecnuqic (how the h*ll do you spell that word?? :rolleyes5 )..

Of course, my friends are racers that chases unsprung weight and don't care about zinc washed or cross drilled bling brakes ;)

my .02 are that you start with the cooling upgrade and then, if you need it, go for bigger brakes...

I know, I can't tell you this because I'm runnin 13" C5, but that's because I didn't know better when I upgraded my brakes


And yes, the airflow to the radiator is ducted... more upgrades are coming there too