I was never satsfied with the stock brakes and I can guarantee you that my stuff was all in pristine shape. I'm very meticulous when it comes to things like that. As i said in a previous post, some of this can be attributed to the perception of what defines good brakes. The circumstances on the road here are very far from what you guys have in the US. Small streets, relativly high speeds allowed, lots of stop & go & cornering.
That's where my opinion of the stock system comes from, for what is demanded from it here it is not very good, the C4 system is a lot worse, I agree but I would not call the C3 brakes good. I won't be using J56 stuff also, I have the wilwood calipers that I think will get the job done, or more than that.
I have no idea how many corvettes you have driven but I have driven somewhere around 25 different cars, I used to help people who wanted to buy a Corvette because most of them here couldn't distinguish an apple from an orange when it comes to these cars. You'd be surprised at how many Corvettes there are here, there's quite a big Corvette club here and i'd estimate the total number of corvettes in the 3000 or so (roughly 16 million people here) and with a country spanning only roughly 125 miles W-E and 150 or so N-S that's quite a bit.

I will stick to my opinion that the stock system is not very good, it may be more than adequate for large highways and belt ways and such but once you hit the small single lane streets here where often speeds in excess of 50mph are allowed, one guy turning onto your lane from a side road and you will have a problem, guaranteed.

 

TT, your point about the narrow European roads is a good one. On a slightly different subject, a few years ago I rented a little Xara and drove the middle section of Italy from Rome to Modena and a lot of places in between. While the Autostrada was relatively wide (although definitely narrow compared to US highways) the smaller rural roads were exceptionally narrow to what I'm used to. I kept thinking that, on one hand, the Vette would be awesome here (the Xara was a turbo diesel so not fast at all but good for pulling hills) but on the other hand I thought the Vette would have a difficult time fitting on most of these roads. Do you stay off the really narrow mountain roads with the Vette or what? I was certain I was going to lose a side mirror because I had to get so close to some walls in order to allow oncoming cars enough room to pass. I was regularly within an inch of hitting the mirror.

 

We don't have mountains here (country is completely flat) but the small winding roads are the most fun, if your steering and brakes are good but it is trucky, very trucky some times. Manouvering the thing through the streets can be a challenge, especially with the nose that is hard to gauge as to how long it is and how much room you have left. A lot of Corvettes here have front nose damage. Imagine those roads combined with fast driving and people turning on the lane in front of you from a side road, you will know that you want good brakes, especially if you don't adhere to speed limits (and I usually don't)

 

Twin Turbo your aluminum calipers certainly are lighter, being wildwood they are also painted black. How is the alumimum caliper better at absorbing heat and at the same time going to run cooler?? We all agree weight saving is a good idea but so I carry a few extra pounds with my heavy cast iron calipers. As for rigidity I think my heavy calipers are just as rigid as lighter aluminum ones. We are not after the last ounce of weight, well not if I can't drill for it.
Your alumimum calipers will get hot just like mine, they will not dissapate heat any faster without ducting. My fluid can be the same, my pads can be the same.
Why is the wildwood caliper that much better. If you could convince me I would get a set tomorrow.
Tapered pads is not something I have run into yet. Perfornance friction pads get better the hotter they go. I can buy them in temperature ranges and if I choose something too hot it won't work on the street cold.
For that one hard stop we only see every now and then my slightly modified brakes will more then handle the situation without the lease sign of fade.
Once again the combination of hydraboost and perfectly maintained factory brakes will handle ALL street driving.
Maybe not autocross without the special pads but all street driving.
To fly down narrow streets, hitting the throttle , then brakes , back on throttle is not normal street driving, it is closer to autocross and then I will conceed I need metalic pads and nothing more.
Once again I was playing at 190 Wednesday night, being tailed and tailing another car and never once did my brakes come close to overheating/fading.

 

They are not painted black, they are anodized a very dark purple like color. aluminium is goig to cool off faster, it heats up quicker but also does not retain the heat like cast iron so when you are not on the brakes they cool daown. Apart from that they are fully stainless steel heat shielded on the inside. They will dissipate heat much quicker, if a material heats up qucikly it also means it dissipates that heat just as quickly. The material is a good heat conductor. They will cool because i will run brake ducting but also because they stick out past the rim considerably and I have a fluid recirculating system (self bleeding)

The aluminium caliper will warm up quicker but will also cool off quicker, on repeated hard braking the aluminium caliper will run cooler overall temperature. The cast rion caliper will heat up slower but won't cool off as much and with successive braking it will get hotter and hotter since it just can't get rid of the heat fast enough.

Here's the amount they stick out:


Apart from that, the pistons are Thermlock T2 Short Track pistons, from wilwood:

"Wilwood's Thermlock® T2 pistons incorporate a stainless steel shield and coated aluminum shell configuration to provide a highly efficient thermal barrier between the brake pads and the caliper body, seals, and fluid. Lower operating temperatures eliminate seal crystallization and localized fluid boiling while providing longer caliper service life through decreased distortion in the caliper body and piston bores. Thermlock® T2 pistons are standard equipment in all Integra calipers."

The bores are a major contributor to the stiffness.
The differential bores are a tremendous help in ensuring equal rotor heat up, not just the edges heat up but the entire rotor, minimizing heat stress. These things only weigh about 5,5 pounds, that sure is a hell of a lot lighter than the stock calipers. Also, the pad area is much larger than the stock one.

What you describe with the narrow streets, that's how sporty driving is done here.

 

"190" ..... I REST MY CASE!! ...redvetracr

 

I think he's talking about km/h

 

redvetracr you sure don't offer much a comment here and there doesn't tell us anything.
Remember knowledge not shared is knowledge lost.

Twin Turbo is right, I am talking about kmh, in miles per hour we were running at 115 and I am quite comfortable at that speed. The rpm is low and there is not the slightest vibration or shudder in the car and MY BRAKES WILL PULL ME DOWN IN A HURRY.

 

This isn't my thread, but you guys seem to be arguing different points. Norval conceeds that the racing-style brakes are great for extended and/or track use, but not necessary and/or justifiable for his application given the cost. Seems reasonable.

Let it be known that I happen to agree with him.

I have a friend with a Lincoln LS exactly like mine except for the brake system. We have both been on the same track at the same time. Yes, I've run my Lincoln on a track. Anyway, I have the factory sport brakes consisting of aluminum two-piston calipers and vented rotors, but I've upgraded to performance pads. His car has almost $5,000 worth of brake upgrades form Stoptech: two-piece vented/slotted rotors with four piston calipers and hi-temp. racing pads. Braided lines, too.

We both were "loaning" our cars for other drivers in this club event. My car had two drivers, including myself, and ran 40 minutes on/20 off. His car had three drivers and ran non-stop all day.

My brakes did fine until the end of the second session, almost 40 minutes into the hot-laps. They started to smoke and fade by that point and need to cool off. In other words, they worked FINE, on-track running hot laps, for over thirty minutes.

His brakes never faded or over-heated. Never.

We both drove home on our original pads.

My best 60-0 COLD braking distance, on good tires, is 113 feet.
His best 60-0 COLD braking distance, on good tires, is 109 feet.

You do the math.

BTW, he says if he were to do it over, he'd just upgrade pads, fluid, and line.

 

i read somewhere a long time ago (i can't remember where) of a 20 dollar system that provides very effective brake cooling. Its a 10 dollar windshield washer pump wired to a pushbutton and reservoir. Run the lines to spray water alcohol mixture inside the cooling vanes of the rotors. When your brakes get hot just give the pushbutton a blip and you have instant cooling. Latent heat of vaporization of the water alcohol mixture provides extremely effective cooling, ie. liquid cools much faster and effectively than air and no ugly ducts.

i also bought some titanium plate off of ebay for cheap and plan to cut a backing plate for the pads to act as a heat shield. Titanium is superior to stainless as a heat shield.

My biggest problem so far is not heat but maintaining enough pedal during an event, which comes down to rotor runout due to bearing play that gets worse as the day progresses and no caliper can solve that. As mentioned earlier in the thread the caliper mounting braket may viberate significantly during braking, and that may be where the rest of my pedal height is going. I need to get those J56 brackets to see if they help.

I also bought a set of willwood 2 pound valves which keep a minimum 2 psi on the brakes to keep the pads from backing away from the rotor in hard turns ect to solve the pedal height issue. Another solution in the chevy power manual is to use a 1.25 inch bore truck master cylinder to get more pedal height at the expense of extra effort but i have yet to find one that fits our booster.

 

My biggest problem so far is not heat but maintaining enough pedal during an event, which comes down to rotor runout due to bearing play that gets worse as the day progresses and no caliper can solve that.

Are you sure you are adjusting the bearings properly?? It is not a simple matter of tightening then backing off to the nearest cotter pin hole. We also have 2 yes two cotter pin holes in the spindle.

 

It is an art to get the bearing play all out without preloading the bearing. In the big block from hell articles Hib Halverson actually recommends a slight preload on the order of inch pounds.http://www.idavette.net/hib/BBfHInet12.htm

I use valve shims to get all the play out but i never noticed the second cotter pin hole.

Any time i tighten too much and give too much preload the bearings immediately develop slop after a few miles. Its a bitch.

Someone has mentioned before that spindle flex may be a contributing factor to the pedal height problem.

This is why i have decided that the floating caliper is a superior design. Also,do you notice how loose fit our pistons are in the bore versus any other caliper where you need a c-clamp to push the piston back in the bore?

 

The last set of J-56 brackets I saw sell went for $350. Same guy sold a NOS set of J-56 pistons & insulators for $1600.
...redvetracr

 

Are the reproductions really poor? I think I've seen them somewhere.

 

I agree, seems that i saw reproductions for reasonable prices. If not, it shouldn't be too hard to make something similar.

Just wondering if anyone has any comments on my ideas to help the stock system other than the typical "its bubba" response.

 

I think someone mentioned that someone at carlise a few years ago were selling knockoffs of the j56 brace. The numbers were stamped instead of raised. But other then that, I think they were exact reproductions.

 

Seems that some people just won't axccept the fact that the stock brakes are not that good at all..oh well, I've drawn my comclusions on it a long time ago, my calipers rest in the parts bin, they won't heat up there

 

I think the early brackets had stamped numbers...also a while back "loosenut2" had an original set of brackets on ebay with a starting price of $2500.
...redvetracr

 

the problem i have as i stated earlier, is the whole concept of fixed calipers with our loose bearings and runout tolerance. Even if you get things perfect you have to deal with runout that may develop in the rotor as it heats up, spindle flex, bracket movement under braking and so forth. If you are going to go to the trouble to revamp the whole thing why not use a modern floating caliper setup? There has to be a reason the whole world has gone to the floating caliper setup.

I've read right here that people who upgrade to the willwoods and other fixed calipers still have a soft pedal and it sucks to spend a bunch of money and still have to pump the brakes.

 

Floating calipers are not superior to fixed ones. Sure, it's nice not to have to worry about the runout problem but they too give irritating feed back when the rotor is not straight, it may be more forgiving but it's not fool proof.

Also, the floating 2piston caliper design does not have the clamping force of the fixed 4 piston and the floating calipers have problems with the slider pins and all. It's just a cheaper setup to manufacture and not having to worry about the specs too much. You will not find a floating caliper on a high $ race car that is competing in some kind of serious race class.