General musings on 4-piston brake upgrades

Ooooohhhh, it finally showed up.



Complete with mismatched sides from the spotty quality control at Wilwood...seems they don't run with proper tool monitoring and they let a shitty worn out endmill run for to long. Big chatter marks and crappy surface finish on one side. Obviously it sailed thru the Q.C. department. I put it into electron form last night and to my surprise it's actually a little bit smaller than I expected. Still doesn't fit but its a little closer.



So Chris, I tried soooo hard to keep the 14" rims. Phone dial rims do not like 4-piston calipers...the flat x-section and stiffening ribs just kill all the clearance. Even with the new smaller dimensions for the caliper the best I can do is a 266mm rotor with almost 1" of wheel spacer and comically deep rotor hats. It can be done but not pretty (some would argue that describes the entire car though).
BTW: when you worked at Tippet did you know Andy Trickel (drove a mini) and his brother?

Michel, um I could show you, but it's really less fun than watching paint dry or grass grow. If you really want to see it my shop is actually in San Leandro. Just send me a PM.

hoche Wrote:
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> Tim, you're in SF? I'm in SJ. I have GOT to stop
> by and buy you some beers and convince you to show
> me how you make those lovely CAD drawings.

Now we see the value of real names and addresses!
Why if Brian Musson "FunVolvo" in San Hose-off doesn't git holt of you Michel, you can try getting holt of him, cause I said to him on the phone that he should hook up and help service so he can get out and see where he thinks he wants to go.
(Although he would be doing a rear wheeeeeeeel drive 240 Volvo, but don't hold the fact he'll have a more fun car against him, m'kay?)
>
>

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John Vanlandingham
Sleezattle, WA, USA

Vive le Prole-le-ralliat

www.rallyrace.net/jvab
CALL +1 206 431-9696
Remember! Pacific Standard Time
is 3 hours behind Eastern Standard Time.

Tim Taylor Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Ooooohhhh, it finally showed up.
>
>
>
> Complete with mismatched sides from the spotty
> quality control at Wilwood...seems they don't run
> with proper tool monitoring and they let a shitty
> worn out endmill run for to long. Big chatter
> marks and crappy surface finish on one side.
> Obviously it sailed thru the Q.C. department. I
> put it into electron form last night and to my
> surprise it's actually a little bit smaller than I
> expected.

Picky picky!!!
Wait till a few pounds of rocks are carried up bty the wheel and it blasts and gouges the everloving sheeeeet out of them, you won't notice no stinkingg toolin marks then!
8)
>
>
>
>

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John Vanlandingham
Sleezattle, WA, USA

Vive le Prole-le-ralliat

www.rallyrace.net/jvab
CALL +1 206 431-9696
Remember! Pacific Standard Time
is 3 hours behind Eastern Standard Time.

john vanlandingham Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

>
> Picky picky!!!
> Wait till a few pounds of rocks are carried up bty
> the wheel and it blasts and gouges the everloving
> sheeeeet out of them, you won't notice no
> stinkingg toolin marks then!
> 8)


So true...I wrote my slightly irked comment after a 12 hour day of machining satellite parts for Lockheed Space Systems. Strangely they are not willing to accept parts with tooling marks :-)

Hey, since it sort of came up and I'm actually going to have room for them in 15" wheels. What's your take on wheel scrapers to protect the caliper? Sorta cool if you can make them work or mechanism for, prodrive et all, to separate rich wankers from more of their money...

Tim Taylor Wrote:

>
> Hey, since it sort of came up and I'm actually
> going to have room for them in 15" wheels. What's
> your take on wheel scrapers to protect the
> caliper? Sorta cool if you can make them work or
> mechanism for, prodrive et all, to separate rich
> wankers from more of their money...

If you have aluminum calipers, and you pay for them yourself, then I think yu'd be crazy to not make so effort at keeping the rocks and mud from gouging the backs, or just sand abrading them thru. And the close the wheel os the biigger the need.

I've seen rocks chew thru Volvo 240 rear iron calipers.

There are super fancy desing with alloy arms and HDPE or similar cut to the exact contour of the inside of the wheel (nice if just light dust is the issue) and simple replaceable bars sturdy enough to take some hits..
I would want something easy to remove but stout.

And not get too greedy on disc ID.
>
>

---

John Vanlandingham
Sleezattle, WA, USA

Vive le Prole-le-ralliat

www.rallyrace.net/jvab
CALL +1 206 431-9696
Remember! Pacific Standard Time
is 3 hours behind Eastern Standard Time.

Tim, make wheel scrapers, make wheel scrapers, make wheel scrapers.

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Cheers
M.Samli
Phoenix AZ
Gaylant VR4
EVO III GSR (Stolen)


Rallies are no place for traitors

Wheel scrapers it is. Where's the best spot? As close to the leading edge of the caliper as possible or angled with a little more space? I'll make sure to leave a pad on the caliper mount to bolt them up.


EDIT: how about a scraper that bolts onto the caliper leading edge...just a little wedge shaped piece that pinches down the clearance and deflects inward. Then it's a universal part for any given caliper family. Has it been done before, am I late to party as usual, is it just plain stooopid idea???? Hmmmmm



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/06/2007 12:17PM by Tim Taylor.

Fantastic idea. That's how Prodrive and RalliART do it. They have a replaceable scraper blade that's made out of 2 layers of mudflap material. Flen you first mount it the inside of the wheel shapes the leading edge of the blade to the right angle.

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Cheers
M.Samli
Phoenix AZ
Gaylant VR4
EVO III GSR (Stolen)


Rallies are no place for traitors

john vanlandingham Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> Now we see the value of real names and addresses!
> Why if Brian Musson "FunVolvo" in San Hose-off
> doesn't git holt of you Michel, you can try
> getting holt of him, cause I said to him on the
> phone that he should hook up and help service so
> he can get out and see where he thinks he wants to
> go.

Yup

> (Although he would be doing a rear wheeeeeeeel
> drive 240 Volvo, but don't hold the fact he'll
> have a more fun car against him, m'kay?)

What, you've forgotten that I have this sitting
around in my side yard?

---

Self-righteous douche canoe



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/06/2007 05:12PM by hoche.

Tim Taylor Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
o Chris, I tried soooo hard to keep the 14" rims.
> Phone dial rims do not like 4-piston
> calipers...the flat x-section and stiffening ribs
> just kill all the clearance. Even with the new
> smaller dimensions for the caliper the best I can
> do is a 266mm rotor with almost 1" of wheel spacer
> and comically deep rotor hats. It can be done but
> not pretty (some would argue that describes the
> entire car though).
> BTW: when you worked at Tippet did you know Andy
> Trickel (drove a mini) and his brother?

Well there's no doubt you are doing the right thing, lack of good brakes on that car was responsible for at least _some_ of the patchwork of colored panels.

And yes, I do know Andy and Bart Trickel, great guys. I used to mountain bike with them on thursday nights after work, something I hope to take up again next month when I have more free time (job is ending).

-chris

Finally got a drawing out of Compomotive for the rims I want to use. As you can see they easily handle all of the clearance problems I was having with room to spare. The green x-section is a TH3-1560 which is a 6Jx15 rim with 4.92" of backspacing. The blue is my current wheels that will be for sale soon. They have so much clearance that it looks like I can mount to the stock brake ears with only a little clearance grinding.

Jawesome - This compooter business is really neat when somebody knows what they're doing.

No kidding! That would make my upgrade so much easier. This pen and paper business is for the birds.

Dan

Your computer design skills are impressive. I rely on reading and lots of thought and math to figure things out.

Anyhow, if you get to the point of rotors here's a nice page to look at.

http://www.hotrodsusa.com/store/images/brakes/custom_rotor_order.jpg

Custom rotors are much cheaper than one would think. Not $40 like some Wilwood stuff, but around $100 per rotor to get a rotor built to the perfect dimension one desires is not too bad. You can also contact Todd Cook at TCE Performance in Phoenix who did all the final design stuff for my rear setup. I had it all designed, called him up, he said, send it all to me and I'll build it all. It's what he does.

I'm stoked to see what you come up with and what the final product looks like. The Compo diagram is sweet.

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Grant Hughes

Wowsers!

Impressive indeed!

I have (slowly) been trying to figure something like this out for my own mazda-based non-rally car, actually. It's a BG chassis escort (yeah yeah, not a real escort, but it's the car I have), rather than your BF chassis 323, but still very similar.

I don't quite have the technique down with the awesome CAD stuff, but it helps a lot to be able to visualize that, for sure.

Anyway, I just thought I'd share that I found a brembo rotor that I was going to see if I could get to work. Turns out it's from a 93-97 Toiletta Celica GT, with a 275mm diameter, 28mm thickness, and had the proper 55mm centerbore. Normally those come in a 5x100 PCD, but looking around, I found a place that could get them as blanks, and drill a 4x100 in them for 90 bucks for the pair. I don't know if this rotor will even be close to working for you, but information is information.

Here's a link to the specs on the rotor: http://sharkpork.com/Catalogo.BREMBO/toyota.discDetail.aspx.htm

and a link to my own general musings on this subject:
http://sharkpork.com/?q=node/10

and to the brembo page in general (handy for finding measurements and stuff) I hope it works, it's a long link:
http://www.brembo.com/CatalogoBrembo/Templates/SearchGray.aspx?NRMODE=Published&NRORIGINALURL=%2fENG%2fAfterMarketBrakes%2fBrembo%2bCatalogues%2fSearchCars%2ehtm&NRNODEGUID=%7b17D7BCC8-5414-40CA-9D35-30F3CABF4BA3%7d&NRCACHEHINT=NoModifyGuest

Anyway, I will definitely be keeping tabs on this thread, since it has way more info than I've been able to come up with myself.

--sarge

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---** To be in compliance with the Anarchy **---
Jorden R. Kleier
Baraboo, Wisconsin, USA
1990 Mazdog Protege 4WD
1973