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I would want to know if they are sleeved in stainless steel. Are they new, if so, they are not Moraine Delco castings. Are they lip or O-ring pistons? If you have original castings, have they been sleeved in stainless steel? If so, consider rebuilding them with an O-ring kit yourself. If your rubber brake lines are old or suspect, replace them as well. Jerry
I'm helping a good friend redo the brakes on his '71. I called and talked with Zip on Monday about their 'new' Delco sleeved calipers to see who did the work. They have both lip and o-ring seals available. I always use ss sleeved o-rings. They confirmed the work is done by Lonestar. I've had GREAT experience with Lonestar rebuilds.
They are O-ring sealed but in their description they are not SS sleeved. No Delco Moraine markings.
I assume Zip's selling the new no name calipers that come from Top Flight (Corvette America), though Top Flight offers them in both sleeved and unsleeved versions. If they are the Top Flight calipers, I've had great luck with them, though I've been using the sleeved o-ring ones, they're a little more expensive but I'm just not comfortable with calipers that aren't sleeved. Two Corvette shops I deal with have started using the Top Flight calipers also, mainly because we're all tired of problems with the rebuilt calipers leaking.
I would like to clarify something after reading CSSB history. George Jonas invented the concept of sleeving Corvette calipers with stainless steel. He had started a company called SSB inc. That is Stainless Steel Brakes, inc and they are still around. This was in the mid seventies and I bought a front pair of his calipers. Another company copied him called Street Specialty Products. I hope that this helps younger Vette owners understand the hardships we went through back then. GM made a ton of money selling new brake calipers for our cars. Lou.
Slight side-note: If an industrious individual was to experiment and play around, I've had a *strong hunch* for yrs, the front Calipers off a Hummer H3
could be adapted to a C3 w/o a whole lot of trouble. The H3's are modern-style calipers ...about the same size/shape as C3 calipers. If so, it would eliminate the typical C3 brake weakness issues. Might even stop better. I've compared side-by-side with C3 front calipers. Both drop-in pads (H3 has 2 pins), same appx size and similar piston bores. Even have spring separators to reduce pad drag.
A new mounting adapter would need to be fabricated. But the existing C3 front caliper mount is made of something like 5/16" steel anyway (from memory), not like it's a special intricate cast item, not that difficult to duplicate . Just plasma-cut out a new one to a pattern, and make the right 'offset' so it's centered over the rotor. The rear calipers...IDK, probably have to come up with different, modern set of calipers for back there. I haven't looked into that. I also never calculated if the M/C would work fine or need a different one ...or wheel clearance. I think wheel clearance would be ok. They seem the same size. Somewhere on my phone I have a side-by-side of C3/H3 calipers (fronts). Maybe someday I'll give one a try. I have an H3 caliper in the basement.
But the H3 fronts look remarkably similar to C3 calipers:
Designer Imagines A Corvette That Looks More Like a Corvette Than the Corvette
Slideshow: A Jaguar designer's personal project imagines what a modern front-engined Corvette might look like if Chevrolet revisited the golden age of the Stingray.
