As many of you know, I've been fighting some pretty wicked brake pad knockback since I built the car. Part of dealing with it this long is do to procrastination
, but it was mostly due to figuring out an economical solution that didn't have to many side effects. Like a full floating rear end that needs serviced way to often, loss of my internal parking brake(Which I really like and use), looked good, and didn't break the bank.(I've already got to much money tied up in this car.
Big thanks go out to Dustin Burr at Wilwood engineering. We talked and came up with an economical solution. What I did was adapt a GM metric caliper fitment to the rear of my car. A metric caliper came on the front of a boat load of cars from 68 on up. Wilwood just came out with their own version that looks great and maches my fronts well. This is a floating caliper design. It was important that I kept the e brake set up but Wilwood doesn't make a bracket to adapt this caliper to there parking brake set up. Dustin hinted around about a company that does and I have to keep that a secret. They don't normally sell this bracket individually so we'll just leave it at that.
This is as step DOWN in brake performance. Meaning, full out road racing and heat disipation. I stepped down to a 12.2" x .81 rotor. (Old was 12.98 x 1.01)They offer the caliper in 3 piston diameters. I picked a diameter slightly smaller than what I had before. My thought was that I feel most of these cars are built with larger brakes than needed out back. Take a look at any Corvette, minus the c6 z06. It's only 30% of the braking. I feel it will meet the needs of my car. I don't endurance race.
As usual, when you put your own swing on things, it comes with it's problems. Just a couple little things to make it work. The brackets I sourced were to tight to fit over the caliper so I had to clearance them and come up with my own spec of how loose I wanted them. A steel bracket and aluminum caliper made me a little nervous due to the difference in expansion rates. I settled on .015 as a minimum on each side. I was really scratching my head mounting up these brackets. I knew the spacing was wrong. Turns out they forgot to send the spacers and hardware with the brackets. Once I recieved teh missing link, things went well. I didi find the center mounting bolt to pass into the e brake slide so I ground the bolts down about 1/8 so the e brake shoes could move as designed.
I'm really happy with how they look. I took her out for a ride tonight and it stops great. The pedal is high and hard. I put it through the paces that would've induced the pedal drop in the past and I was only able to detect a hint of knockback. If the track results back this up. I'm going to be a happy dude! I'll report back after my next event.
Brian Hobaugh SCCA National Tour June 2014
First Hemi 'Cuda Convertible Ever Built
Short clips: Goodguys Pleasanton autocross and pit videos
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