Socko

I am wondering if anyone has built their own big brake kit and has any useful input for me? More or less I refused, on principle, to be corvette taxed by the vendor selling the kit I want. As they sell subie brackets for $200 and want $500 for corvette brackets. I decided to buy all the parts from summit for just over $600 and will have my fsl6r kit together with under 1k invested and have much more robust brackets. I already have all of the hardware and a hand milled bracket for checking my measurements. I am an IT guy not a machinist so didn't trust my ability to measure to the hundredth.

So, before I have my final bracket milled is there any pointers anyone can give me? I have done the fea in solidworks and done the heat load math, though temperature shouldn't be at critical levels as all brackets are generally the same and don't "melt" off.

The good news is that, as I suspected, the new fsl6r calipers fit under the stock 17's with 12.8 or c6z51 13.4" rotors. And under the 18" stock rear wheel with a 12.8 13.4 or 14" c6z rotor. I will likely add a 1/8" spacer for piece of mind as it clears all listed options but some of them are pretty darn close to the spokes. So I will have a bunch of options with caliper spacers once I update my front wheels.

Thanks for any input! I'll toss some pitures in here for fun! First 2 are on the mockup spindle with a stock 12.8" rotor. Last one is on my car under my stock rear wheel spaced out for a 14" rotor.

Nowanker

Looks good to me! I used the narrow Wilwood (FNSL6?) on the F for spoke clearance (18" Enkei NT03 wheels/C6Z discs), otherwise followed a similar path. I cheaped out on the rear and used stock C6Z stuff. Works great, and satisfaction of doing it yourself!

RC000E

Looks test ready...

Socko

I think I am going to just get c6z51 brackets for my rear and go the super cheap route. lol

0Todd TCE

I believe you can get this setup pre packaged and complete from KNS. Pretty much the same thing without the extra work to 'make' it. Granted..if you have machining skills, time, don't mind the work, yeah I get that.

ZedO6

How much of a spacer did you need to clear the caliper with the C5Z 10.5" and a 14" rotor?

hklvette

If you don't count your time as cost, then sure you can make it cheaper yourself. Same as with any other DIY project.

Socko

No spacer, the rear 18" c5z wheel clears straight up on a 14" rotor. Mind you I will likely run a 1/8th spacer cause the spokes are close.

I talked to Todd on the phone actually at the beginning of this journey and he was quite helpful, if he sold a 20mm kit or still had the w6a kits I likely would have bought from TCE. Vansteel makes a bracket they sell for a reasonable price and they were also very nice, but it is only for the fnsl6r. Like kns's bracket it comes from the inside of the hub so it could be shimmed to work with the 20mm caliper but would likley need some height adjustment which would be easy enough on a mill, but the fnsl6r has a 1.43" mount height vs 1.63" so you would have to remove .2" from the bracket and keep the boss's on it and it was hard to tell form pics if it would work for sure. The kns bracket is too heavily taxed.

I have no machining skill or knowledge, my buddy is doing that work for me, which is awesome. I just make the models/measurements.

This is a pic of the 14" rotor spacing of the caliper with the 18" wheel on.

Socko

Got the car out on the street today with finalized brackets. It feels good and everything looks dry. So pretty awesome so far. Now to take it to the track! It is on stock 12.8 rotors atm but i got 13.4" centrics coming. these rotors are new so i figure i will burn them up at my RA weekend then switch later in the season.

Tons of clearance on the stock 12.8" rotor with the stock 17" speedlines.

Patane

Hi for those who whant an already made bracket for the wildwood
fslr6 and FSLR4 I had done his route but had to made 20 brackets to start the project.

those bracket will fit the new wilwood FSLR6 (6 Pistons ) for front and the FSLR4 ( 4 Pistons ) for the rear that use the 7420 Pas shape wich is 20mm thick and 41mm height ( I made my bracket to fit the 50mm pad height too, like the AP Racing 8350 caliper).

I'm about to install it in my car so it will be FSLR6 in front FSLR4 in the rear same 4 disk brakes and same 4 brakes pad, .

So I will be able to swap front and rear disc and pad for compensate the wear and use my pad all the way down.

But I will loose my hand brake.

Patane

that my ad and picture of the bracket.

https://www.corvetteforum.com/forums...0-bracket.html


And I forget to tell you that those brackets could be use for those who cracked their Hard Bar T1 Kit brackets ( small modification must be done prior on the AP Racing 8350 )

Patane

Did you know that if you made an exactly same other bracket that you could use it in the back and use a wilwood FSLR 4 ?

Then you will have same 4 disk and pads..... That what I made and the caliper have the same surface area as the oem caliper so no problem with ABS TC.

I had done the same route as you cause I cracked the "thin bracket that came with the pricely kit that I bought and now they whanted to sell me replacement for 500$...

I had about 12 brackets left so if you know someone who whant a pair PM me .... about 330$ shipped with all the high quality bolt and Nord-Lock washer ( witch cost me alone 50$ )

Socko

Yeah i realize its the same for the rear in theory, though i would need to do an inside arc to clear the drum housing i think, and the offset of the rear rotor is slightly higher if you want to keep the parking brake. But its easily workable. Not to concerned about the rear for this season.

I thought about running 4 front discs and no ebrake, but my car is more a street car then track car still. The convience of being able to get a ride to any parts store and getting a new stock rotor is adequate to cover me for now. No need to have 4 matching rotors, yet.

bill.c6z06

Nicely done. I ended up making quite similar brackets for my C6Z06 when I wanted to upgrade my front Wilwood W6A calipers to the new racing version of the Aero6 calipers and take advantage of the more rigid design and .8" thick pads. A few years ago I got the complete W6A Wilwood BBK with their 14.25" rotors. But Wilwood doesn't make a bracket for the combination of race Aero6 caliper and their 14.25" rotor, so I had to make my own:











BTW, the Wilwood kit prices are considerably cheaper than all of the a-la-carte prices for the same parts, which makes the kits a more attractive buy, especially if you can catch them on sale. But like you said, the Wilwood brackets by themselves are quite expensive at nearly $400/pr. I have more time than money right now, so making my own made sense. While I was at it, I made two other variants of the brackets, W6A for stock 14" Z06 rotor, and race Aero6 for stock rotor. I modeled my brackets using Fusion 360 but don't have a CNC program for them.

Bill

Socko

Wow those aero brackets are conceptually very similar to what I did. I did search around a bit and didn't find much about people doing this kind of thing themselves. I am glad to see a number of people have done it before and are still alive to talk about it.

RX-Ben

FWIW, Wilwood makes a large variety of brackets and hats, it isn't that difficult to piece together a kit using off-the-shelf parts.

Socko

I actually talked to them and they were quite open with what they had available. They don't have anything that will work with the stock rotors.

The whole point of this was that I could go to any parts store and grab blanks for $50-80 each and go from a 12.8 to a 13.4 to a 14" rotor as my wheels allowed and my needs change. I am not devouring 12.8" rotors as is, so I assume a 13.4 with 3ish lbs of extra mass will work very well. If those are problematic 4 lb heavier(then the 13.4) 14" c6z rotors will be adequate I have to imagine. Its all about having a balance between ease, functionality, options, and cost. I just don't see any option that is better then this one at the moment for someone on street tires. Hatted rotors just aren't a reasonable option on street tires. I'll take the extra 3-4 lbs of minimal moi hat weight over doubling the cost of my rotor consumables a season. I am not a racer, just hpde, i am just timing for consitency not trying to set track records.

Socko

I got my car on track and the brakes worked perfectly! I can highly recommend that you take this on yourself if you have access to a mill and machining skills.

As a side note, the npt fitting on the wilwoods doesn't seal well. It seeps a tiny bit cause the threads are anodized and not perfectly even somehow, as there was a line in both of mine where the anodizing wasn't worn off from tightening the fitting in, it went all the way down the thread about 1/8-3/16" wide.

I used the permatex high temp thread sealant and it works fine on track. Held the pressure it takes for 1.1g's of decel. It takes 72 hours to cure though, so make sure you don't wait till the last minute.

magracy

nice job! I assume you have stock master cyl. how was you pedal travel? Was it lower than when you had stock calipers?

KNSBrakes

I am sorry you think our bracket is over-priced. Although I don't recall quoting just the brackets? Perhaps Nick did? I wouldn't mind a PM on that and we certainly would prefer a direct approach i.e. "Hey - why are the brackets so much? We like profit but dislike taxes just like you. (Guess who REALLY pays for Amazon's free shipping btw?)

We buy the Subaru brackets in a much larger volume so there would be at least some price difference. I will review that.

We have not sold many WW kits overall but I wonder if the caliper or rotor pricing is the actual problem. Since those are the ebay/amazon items we probably pay nearly the same as you for the parts. Again something to review.

We also had some issue when the FSL came out w/ the mount height. We either erred - or WW bounced around. I think our brackets are currently in between base and Z51 sizes

Only so many ways to make the same thing - we add value where we can.