GOTHAM VETTE

I'm in the process of buying a set of the above and am trying to determine if they will fit in my 18" CCW 505A's. I'm not concerned about the circumference of the rim, but I'm worried about them fitting behind the spokes.

When I ordered the rims John and I spoke about my intended use for the car and I told him that I wanted to put a BBK on my car at some point;that being the case he made the lip of the rim smaller for me so that I would have more clearence.

My question is....when I install the brakes do I basically just need to make sure that they fit without binding on the rim, or do I need to make sure that they have the exact amount of clearance that Wilwood specifies?? Also, will the calipers expand at track days??

Thanks guys

fatbillybob

what does wilwood specify? Some say wheels flex so if clearance is tight.....

RedLS1GTO

Wilwood has tech drawings of all of their systems on their website. Print it out to a 1:1 scale and see if it fits. I did that with my setup and proved that it would fit when most of the experts said it wouldn't.

Sidney004

I did some rough calculations and assuming that that the wheel has no rise in temperature(which it will) and the entire caliper, spindle, hub rises in temperature 300F(which it won't) .030 radial clearance will do the trick for thermal expansion.

flink

Yikes, that would be tight.

I have 4-pot wilwood superlites on my little e36 track car and when I had a helper push the brake pedal I was able to see the caliper expanding outwards quite clearly. I didn't measure the movement but I'd guess that it was in the 1-2mm range.

That was the outboard part of the caliper, moving towards the wheel spokes!

Sidney004

So you measured mechanical deflection of .080 radial; factor in another .030 for worst case thermal expansion. One would probably need About an 1/8 of an inch radial clearance to be safe.

Andrew, did you ever get your brakes sorted out? PM me.

flink

Sounds good. It would be scary to have the spokes start munching the caliper under heavy braking with hot calipers!

I did, thanks. Replacing the PFC01's with DTC70's and cleaning the rotors had magical effects. The whole saga is laid out here: http://forums.bimmerforums.com/forum....php?t=1343149

It's still all a bit of a mystery. I think I'll give the PFC01's to Bill to use on his C5. That way we'll find out if they were actually defective.

RedLS1GTO

FWIW, just looked at the tech drawing of the SL6R that I used and Wilwood has .46" minimum required clearance between the wheel and outer edge of the caliper. I'm sure that they are using a very conservative number for liability reasons though.

longdaddy

why do you want to use wilwood? in that size you can get systems with better reliability.

GOTHAM VETTE

From what I've heard the Wilwoods are a respectable system. If you have proof of this not being the case please do share.

longdaddy

you get what you pay for. unless you are budget restricted, i would look elsewhere. if I had to do it again, I would have gone with a different kit. this is not to say that wilwood makes terrible products, just that the price/quality compromise is not for everyone.

http://forums.corvetteforum.com/auto...-lg-gstop.html

this is a quote from the owner of a local race shop who has daily experience with aftermarket brake systems (in response to my comments about leaking issues)

RedLS1GTO

FWIW I went Wilwood on my C4 for a few reasons. First, I am on a budget that is likely smaller than most. Second, Thanks to Uncle Sam my "racing operations" are currently in an apartment complex parking lot. The second one is important because it means that I don't have access to all of the cool equipment that I usually would and therefore don't really have much ability to manufacture parts. Wilwood was the only company that made a good bolt on kit that would fit on the car with my 17" wheels (13" kit). It works very very good for what it is. It stops a million times better than stock and the wear is fantastic. Would I rather have Stoptech, AP, or one of the other "elite" brands that cost 3+ times as much... sure. But for my needs the Wilwood does just fine.

Bill Dearborn

I keep hearing all of these stories about Wilwood brakes not performing well but that isn't my experience. I ran the LG G Stop Wilwood Kit on my 03Z for 4.5 seasons. 10 to 15 track days per season. Never had a problem with them other than the calipers changing color due to the heat. When the car wasn't on the track it was on the street which is probably the worst use for a caliper built like the SL6 since there are no dust boots around the pistons. Never had a leak nor any movement of the caliper. With 1/16 inch clearance between the back of the spoke and the caliper I did not have any problems. Other than bleeding/flushing brake fluid through them I never serviced them in any other way.

Some times the "You get what you pay for" argument means something and other times it does not. I suspect with the other so called BBK packages on the market you are probably overpaying for what you get.

Bill

longdaddy

it's interesting that most people for whom these kits were reliable bought them a few years back.

Bill Dearborn

It all depends on what you mean by reliable doesn't it. I keep hearing of problems but never any description of what those problems are. Without that there is nothing to go on.

The only thing that irked me about Wilwood was their pricing on replacement parts. I thought it might be a good idea to replace the bridge bolts and nuts after removing and installing them so many times. The bolt and nut cost $50 to replace. If you lost the nut you had to buy the bolt as well and pay $50. I made sure I never lost any of the parts at those prices.

Bill

mgarfias

Thanks for the info, I'll try to a) not lose mine, and b) find another source.

Bill Dearborn

The nuts that hold the calipers on the radial studs aren't cheap either. They are aircraft parts and you can't get them through the normal auto parts supply chain. Even the washers used as spacers between the bracket and the caliper that space the caliper radially out from the rotor are special washers that have parallel sides instead of being tapered like most washers that are generally available. Never checked the cost of those babies but they are probably aircraft parts as well.

Bill

GOTHAM VETTE

Thanks for all of the great insight guys, after much measuring and template making I think I'm good to go. I'll be doing a test fit next week and will post pics and results.

mgarfias

Eh, "aircraft" doesn't mean stupid expensive. There are ways to get them fairly inexpensively. Even at $5 bolt it beats the hell out of $50 from wilwood. The bolts will probably take some work to get figured out, but definitely doable. There is no way wilwood is having fasteners custom made (then again at $50/bolt nut combo maybe they are).

HRP has a $100 kit thats got a bazillion jet nut/washers in all different sizes: Here

Bill Dearborn

Where were you when I was looking for this info a couple of years ago? The problem is finding the people who supply these parts. I went to a number of industrial fastener suppliers and they couldn't tell me where to get the parts. Never knew what the parts were called so it was hard to find any info on the internet.

Bill