Anyone know if a F-body or later Corvette front spindle will fit our cars? I am trying to install a 6-piston brake and larger rotor on my car, and it would be alot easier to find a bolt on kit if I could do that. No one offers a kit or package for the C3's, but they do for F-body's and Vettes. If I go with a larger wheel and tire, it might not be much of a problem at all, and much less than doing a truly custom, high-quality setup with fabricated mounts, etc.

 

Have you been looking at the wilwood 6 piston conversion on the LGmotorsports page?

I had been looking at that too and wondered the same. I did some investigating and I was told the F-body the kit is made for has a McPherson type front suspension :( :(

Another thing, if you are going w/ 6 pistons in the front and you want some larger 4 pistons on the rear. I suspect the GT/integra 4 piston wilwoods fit the stock rear caliper bracket. The bolt holes are spaced right and the distance from the wheel center seems dead on. I have to assemble one of my rear trailing arms & hubs to check (wasn't planning on using them), then I can make sure.

Marck

 

I haven't seen the LG kit, is it for C3's?

When I mentioned F-body, I should have been more explicit, I was thinking of the older Gen I and II Camaro's, etc. They make alot of trick suspension parts for those cars, and you can get serious brakes for them. I'm looking at Alcon, Brembo, AP, etc.

The Wilwoods I've seen people use are a good option, but I don't think their braking performance is that much better than a properly working stock system. However, they are much lighter and they look trick.

As you mentioned, I will need some better 4-piston rears as well. I'm planning on doing the front system first and then do the rears later. I'll add an adjustable bias valve to compensate for the performance differential between the front and rear in an effort to prevent rear brake lockup.

 

Monty go over to http://www.pro-touring.com/forum/forum.htm Pro-Touring has a big section on brakes and a conversion available for big brakes for a member. At least some good information. Nice bunch of guys. JIM

 

The LG kit is for the late model F-bodies.

I know ACP in germany has a kit for brembo's on a C3 (front & rear) but they're 4 piston calipers. Maybe Mov-It.de has the 6 pistons for the front. They probbly can make them, they custom make about everything you ask (even carbon disks & 8 piston kits)

Marck

 

I always love it when you start a thread Monty!

Maybe Mark Stielow (sp) could help. The guy in the PHR mag building the camaro. Arent you somewhere near his shop (relatively speaking)? It has always suprised me that you haven't bought yourself a little shop mill yet. For about a grand or two you could buy one and turn out your own brackets whenever you need em. Thats my plan once I get a bigger garage! Anyways, I remember he put late model spindles on the 'Mule' project. Maybe he could tell you what needs to be taken into consideration when scoping out other spindles, or maybe he is keyed into some kind of secret database that we can't access. The things I can think of that need to be considered are:

Rear steer - unless you want to change your steering to front steer.
spindle height - distance between upper and lower ball joints
position verticaly of the actual spindle - vertical height of the wheel relative to A-arms.
angle of the upper to lower mount line relative to horizontal - shorter upper A-arm and longer lower one could be issue.
bearing centerline distance to upper to lower mount line - sticks out further then ours so would require modern wheels with lots of backspace.

Not trying to discourage you, but wouldn't it be easier to get some custom brackets made? You could buy a Wilwood hat of just about any depth and bolt on a rotor and just take a spare spindle and and the caliper and rotor to a job shop and be done with it. Then you could sell us all the brackets! Actually, I was reading the other day about this shop that machines aluminum with a woodworking router. I was thinking about buying a Wilwood sixpuck and trying that myself.

Anyways, be sure to let us know what you find.

Chris

 

The guy that helped me with my headers bought a pair of 3-axis CNC machines. They build alot of racecars and drag race suspension parts for the NMRA/NMCA/NSCA crowd. Anyway, I mentioned this to him and he's interested in doing something, but I just thought that if I could simply swap another spindle from a car that already has the type of brake kit I'm looking for.

 

This is the late model f-body kit from LG. I think those 6 pistons have the same bolt spacing as my 4 pistons (these have really small 1st & 2nd pair pistons)


Here's the integra 4's , now all I need is some brackets.


There was a guy here that made brackets, who was that? (keith - 427v8 ???)

He made brackets for the dynaliteII calipers if I'm not mistaking. The dynalites have the same bolt spacing as these

Integra4:


DynaliteII


The radius to the centerline is differnt but of course the whole caliper is different. I wonder if the Integra4/GT calipers fit with his brackets.

Marck


[Modified by Twin_Turbo, 9:42 AM 12/12/2002]

 

Monty, did the Hydroboost give you better braking, or just more space? im looking in to getting one. :cheers:

 

The HB vastly improves stopping power. Get one!

 

Monty 71 roadster said what I wanted to say. The later spindles are longer. In past posts I mentioned ball joint extenders trying to get the geometery of later cars. This is a good thing but the front back steering was an issue. You just got your rack and pinion steering done and this would screw it up.
Have you tried your hydraboost brakes yet? I don't think so. I find with my stock brakes that it is no problem locking up all 4 wheels. How can bigger brakes help? Once you lock up other then ABS you don't need more power. Sure weight is an issue and looks are another. To me fabricating brackets are easy and it leaves your new steering alone. It still doesn't address the problem of our cars with their short spindles going into positive camber on a hard corner.
Good luck

 

You guys are always spending my money! :D

 

Marck,

Those 6 piston Wilwoods are similar to what I have in mind. Keith did a very nice job with his Wilwoods and brackets but the Dynalights really aren't much of an improvement over the stock braking system in terms of braking performance. I'm looking for something that will provide shorter stopping distances, as well as being repeatable.

As Norrval menioned, if you're on the verge of lockup w/o ABS, larger brakes probably aren't going to shorten your breaking distance, everything else equal. Hopwever, if you add stickier/wider tires to the mix, then the brakes wouldn't be as apt to lockup with the added traction. In that case, then larger brakes would be beneficial and should improve performance. Additonally, larger claipers and rotors are able to absorb much more heat and while the braking performance between them and stock might not be great initially, after a few repetitive stops, the smaller braking system will get heat soaked and performance will diminish. As least that's my understanding.

Admittedly, looks are also a factor to me. I plan on instlling 17 or 18" wheels and tires, and I don't want the puny brake look.

I have not driven the car with the Hydroboost yet, I haven't even plumbed it yet. I just received my power steering and tranny coolers yesterday, so I plan on starting to plumb it this weekend. I installed the Hydroboost for two reasons: one for added clearance between the valve covers, as well as between the downpipe and the mastercylinder/booster. Second, sicne this is a street car and I don't run a transbrake, I wanted to eliminate the vaccum asssist due to the fact that the assist is lost when boost is built and there is manifold pressure rather than vacuum. Under normal circumstances, this is not an issue becuase you would typically close the throttle prior to or during th applicaiton of the brakes, and there would be manifold vacuum in that case. However, if I try to powerbrake to build boost at a stop, I lose power brake assist when the manifold transitions from vacuum to pressure.

With regards to the rear steer/front steer arrangement of other spindles and the Steeroids, wouldn't it be possible to simply use the original steering arm since it just bolts to the spindle - assuming the bolt pattern is the same. Of course if it isn't, then that means fabricating a custom steering arm, which wouldn't save much time/effort over just fabbing the claiber brackets to begin with. The guy that helped me with my headers also manufacturers alot of steering and suspension components for muscle cars, as well as newer Camaros, f-body's etc. He recently came out with some billet aluminum steering arms that fit a wide variety of cars, it might be possible to utilize those.


[Modified by Monty, 10:49 AM 12/12/2002]

 

nothing to do with the subject, but i checked out the vids on your site Monty, and all i can say is damn. the lack of a complete exaust and those turbos sounds incredible. good point about vaccum too. :yesnod:

 

Lol! You should hear it now that the engine's in the car and I'm not running any exhaust past the downpipes. There isn't much that compares to the sound of spooling turbos, discharging wastegates, and popping blow off valves. It's my own little orchestra, who needs a stereo! ;)

I'm buying a digital camcorder for my wife for Christmas, maybe I'll "test" it out for manufacturing defects and take some better videos.

 

Monty, who is this guy that manufactures the steering arms? Are they for GM muscle cars? I think we are interested in what he is doing. Can you e-mail me his contact information? Thanks.

 

Sure, check your email...

 

i remember a Stock Talon TSI i tesdrove. is had an upgrade blow-off and a boost controller, besides the un-impressive 4 cyl it sounded great. i can only imagine what yours sounds like. :crazy: :yesnod:

 

One of the guys on here was doing a custom Aluminum mount for the 4 piston... it probably wouldnt be to hard to adapt just the caliper... but that wouldnt give you alot of rotor :cheers:

 

I think it is a gross oversiplification to say that if you can lock up your brakes, you really don't need anymore brake. I did a lot of looking around at different aftermarket calipers and and found that almost no aftermarket caliper has a larger combined piston area than the stock vette calipers. So how do we get better braking? Braking is a function on the torque and clamping force being applied to the rotor. Since the clamping force is a function of the piston area and the coefficient of friction of the brake pad, and we cant seem to get a much larger piston area (even nascar brakes dont use larger piston areas then the stock vettes), what we can do is run the largest area pad we can to increase the coefficent of friction (which is what a six piston caliper does) and increase the lever arm applied to ther rotor (run a larger diameter rotor). The stock rotors are just under 12 inches. A 14 inch rotor would increase the lever arm %17. The big advantage is that it would give you a lot better modulation of the brakes. That is, it wouldn't be all or none, it would be a lot easier to get right up to the edge of locking them up without actually doing it. And the cooling as Monty mentioned is also a huge advantage in competitive driving.

Chris