The Wilwood Dynalites do weigh 2.5 lbs sans pads.
They also require a really nasty bracket. Very complex.
they also have a small pad. The small pad isn't a big deal except pad life is less.

Wilwood also makes the 4 piston superlite that I make brackets for. 13" or stock rotors. Almost the same piston size so they will stop as good as stock.

Oh and to settle the argument no caliper can decrease your stopping distance. Get better tires.

 

Dont forget bigger rotors and better pads
When was this little guy introduced to the forum? I just noticed him

 

I think the "improved" stopping distance is from lightening your wallet by $1200! I dont GET IT! my cast iron C3 brakes work very well but, if you must have them, go ahead, I'll take a nice lightweight set of wheels and race tires any day! I hope all my competitors buy this "upgrade", I'm going to buy the Corvette Steering Service power steering box with my $650 and we'll see how yours and mine work at the races.

 

how about lightweight wheels and lightweight brakes Everyone is talking about stopping distance but the difference is in repeating that hard braking multiple times, then the aluminium caliper will really pay off.

 

Glad a few people agree. I guess in theory the aluminum will allow the caliper to run cooler, but the claim of stopping distance improved 40% is almost laughable.

And, hey 2 1/2 pound Wilwood caliper, ~ $100 each (for those lucky types of cars where they can bolt on). Titanium caliper my a$$! Hey Van Steel I appreciate your excellent service but not that condescending response in which I was more or less called a liar.

 

why bigger rotors?

it was correctly mentioned before that our rotors are 1.25 inch thick and have a lot of iron, and substantial vanes which allows them to cool better. The only advantage of a larger rotor as in 13" is to give more torque which is not needed if you can lock up after multiple stops.

 

VB is supposedly working on a design now...
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No one is going to get rich selling brakes to Corvette people

 

hmmm.... $1200 for SSBC or $400 for Z06 calipers. i can do an awful lot of fabricating for $800. besides, i rarely hear Z06 owners complain about the performance of their brakes. and to boot, two piston sliding calipers have to be lighter than four piston fixed. think i know which way i'm going.

 

turtle, i have to disagree with you on your last comment. the larger diameter rotors give you more leverage. it also gives you better pedal feel and makes it easier to modulate the braking effort.
for example, imagine this scenario, your using your hands to stop a spinning wheel. the wheel weighs 20lbs. and is 6" in diameter. now imagine stopping a similar 20lb. wheel that is 12" in diameter.
the example is a bit extreme but your hands don't have hydraulic force either.
i'm a believer that our factory brakes with good pads and the aforementioned better tires will stop with all but the best current production cars. that statement applies to almost all but the most extreme driving. i have had my car on track multiple times over multiple days and generally begin to experience brake fade in the later stages of the event and typically (20 minute sessions) after the session is half over.
our brakes are a very good start for a street car and only need slight upgrading of pads, lines and some cooling to perform exceptionally.
the whole arguement about switching to aluminum, for me, actually has very little to do with improving braking, but rather improve handling and unsprung weight. every little bit helps.

 

Just about any brake system can lock the wheels up, just slam on the brakes as hard as you can as quickly as you can. The larger rotors allows you to brake at the threshold of the wheels from locking up. Baer states it pretty well...
Although virtually any brake system can be spiked into locking a rotor or activating the ABS, the true measure of a performance brake system is how close it allows you to come to the point just shy of locking. This is affected by a number of elements. Some of the most important are caliper stability and leverage affect on the rotor, which increases with rotor diameter. In simple terms, the more stable a caliper and the more evenly it can apply the pads to the rotor surface, the faster your car will stop.

 

I'm not buying the larger rotor argument. If you can only lock your brakes by slamming the pedal, then yes, larger rotors will help by giving more leverage so that it might become controllable. But if you have plenty of reserve, then that argument disappears. I can lock the brakes by slowing pushing the pedal harder and harder. There's no shock to the system there. And the tires I have (Pilot Sports) are about as sticky as you can get for a street tire. My calipers are in poor condition too (replacing those next week).

On the other hand, I imagine larger rotors would cool better, and of course the extra leverage helps if you are getting fade.

How good are the stock manual brakes? If you could come up with enough extra grab to make up for some of their deficiences, then you might get better feel. Power assists usually isolate you from the road too much.

 

I don't think so, the slider bolts, the bracket around the caliper..those weigh a lot and are no contributing to clamping force, whereas an aluminium 4 piston caliper has 2 extra pistons, the bores stiffen the caliper and the pistons don't weigh that much. If the floating system was so good why don't you see it on high end race cars or expensive street cars? I hav yet to see a Porsche, Ferrari or Lambo or whatever use a floating caliper. The floating caliper is cheaper to manufacture, easier to setup (runout) and that's the reason they are so popular. Cheap and it get's the job done, a winning combination for auto makers that don't want to have the very best.

 

rotor diameter is one of the biggest factors in braking performance. it is fundamental. fast lap times are all about balancing the car throughout a corner. this is most always done by brake modulation.

is it easier to tune your analog FM radio tuner with a big dial or a small dial? the argument is analogous to rotor diameter.

for a test, install 6" rotors and 2" dia calipers pistons and see how well you do. the torque (pressure/area*radius) applied is the same so you can still lock the brakes, but have fun setting up for a corner.

 

No it's not analogous. I'm not trying to turn the wheel to a specific spot, but apply a specific torque. Yes, you use less pedal pressure with a bigger rotor. That doesn't mean it's better. There's such a thing as too little effort, almost as much as there can be too much. And there's a huge gray area in between where things don't change much.

Caliper flex will go down with a larger rotor, but I doubt this can be felt with practical modifications.

 

you don't have to explain to me. I had a few years of statics and dynamics classes on the way to my engineering degree. I said you get more torque with a larger diameter rotor, but as stated correctly earlier in the thread if that larger diameter rotor is thinner you are losing out overall. I disagree that a 13' rotor is going to give any more pedal feel than a 12". A 12" rotor with a caliper with more clamping force compensates for this. The pedal feel and modulation has to do with the relative size of the master cylinder bore and the caliper piston area in square inches. The smaller the master bore the more modulation and feel you will get. Unfortunately due to the fixed setup we need larger master bores to bring the pads back in contact with the rotor after runout, viberation and flex and still have enough travel left to have effective braking. With a floating caliper the caliper slides back and forth with the pads still remaining very close to the rotor so you don't get that initial 1" of pedal travel just to bring the pads back in contact with the rotor. The other factor is how finely controllable is the vacuum or hydraulic booster.

our rotors are substantial, and its a shame that anyone is breaking his back to convert to a 13". A good floating caliper that fits our 12" rotors is all that is really needed to fix the loss of pedal height problems we experience due to pumping.

 

stated by someone with a huge financial interest in selling bigger brakes.

 

I bought a set of Wilwood Dynalite II's with the brackets and all mounting hardware off of a guy on Ebay about two years ago.

Never used them yet as my currrent ss/aluminum setup is working fine.

Will go dig them out from my stockpile of goodies and weigh them...

 

Yes, you can eventually find the threshold of a small rotor by slowly applying pressure until you do find the threshold. I do not see how this is optimum or efficient when trying to brake quickly or during a panic stop. The 1.25" larger rotors will help you hit the threshold much quicker. Look at the c5 guys that are autocrossing, they upgrade their 12.x" rotors to 13+.

 

The point is from a racing standpoint and not a panic stop. Also, when you have CONSISTENT brakes they will grab in a similar fashion throughout the race if they are cooled properly and don't fade. This means that after you get the feel for the brakes you won't have to carefully apply pressure to reach the point just before locking, you can do it quickly because the pedal position where it happens will be the same, that's why consistent brakes are key. If you have inconsistent fading brakes you have to slow down much earlier for a corner to search for that illusive, and changing, point of optimum braking.

The larger rotor has a much higher speed angle (radial speed) than the smaller rotor, this means that the verlocity difference between pad and rotor at the same wheel speed is higher, meaning the friction is higher also. A higher radial speed has to be slowed down, giving you more feel for the optimum braking point.

A good example on how it improves the modulating ability is this, drive slowly and apply a good amount of pressure to the pedal. Then drive significantly faster and apply the same amount of pressure. You will notice that the higher the speed the less "grabby" the brakes feel.