Hey Guys,
HAs anyone ever tried bmw brake setups on thirdgens? I missed out on some nice used calipers on ebay a few days ago which sold for about $80 the pair and they were huge dual pistons which retail for $1000 a pair. The rotors were 13inches and had HUGE pad area. They were from a 750il e38 BMW. The reason im thinking BMW is they have some awesome sport options and since our rims are pretty much interchangable it shouldnt take too much to put a set of BMW rotors on and make up a bracket to hold the calipers. Just keep in mind the parts are really cheap for used bmw stuff and the stock stuff is prolly better than high performance stuff for many chevys...
Anyone had any experience or think this could be worth looking into?

 

Various COMPLETE setups on ebay ranging from $20 to $150. Thats front and rear calipers, pads and rotors. These guys upgrade to shiney new kits and throw their old kits on ebay.

 

Yea you do bring up a god point, i found a whole set of calipers off a z3 M roadster for 120$ buy it now. I guess anything is possible if you can machine parts. I would love to find a set of 1le calipers for that cheap.

 

LOL its like heaven.. I have seen many kits like that! M3s and M5s I am paying off too many things right now to buy brakes but i will be doing the bmw setup asap.

 

$85 buy it now plus $38 shipping

 

It would be nice to have a cheaper alternative to some better brakes, if you do manage to start anything on this be sure to take tons of pictures. lol there are a few camaros running around in the european section with porsche brakes so anything is possible.

 

Brakes are a real pain to upgrade on the 3rd gen


My other car is a 96 Mazda MX-6 that came with basicly the same sized brakes as my T/A and still has a reputation for fade after a few laps. Thats at a curb weight of about 2600 pounds with leather, all power and the v6.

When i bought the car there were very few options for upgrades. There were 2 4 pot front end aftermarket kits thet cost between $2K and $3500 so those were not an option for me.

I ended up runnung my fronts down nearly to the backing plates before I discovered a good solution.

I found out that the 98+ Mazda 626 sedan only when optioned with the v6 and 4 wheel discs came with 11.1" by 1" rotors in the front apposed to my MX-6's stock 10.2 by 1" fronts.

It turns out that simply by buying parts for the late model sedan I could have nearly an inch larger rotors and matching calipers for the same price as stock replacements They just barely fit stock 15" wheels.

The rear rotors are about a half inch biger than my old stockers too and all this was a no cost upgrade lol. The MX-6 was one of the best stopping cars in the world when it came out ranking up there with rear engined porches and using just factory hard parts you can preserve all the feel and balance of the factory system and extend your hot lapping range by nearly double.

And thats not the best part! after I let this info out on the Forums along with all the other things i had learned we started discovering that all the newer Mazdas and many fords can donate brakes that simply bolt on.

You can go as large as 12.6" fronts with 2 piston calipers for just slightly more than the stock parts cost and in a car that can be lightened to just over 2 thousand pounds for track duty thats incredible stopping power.


My next combination will be 12.6" rotors with RX-7 4 pot aluminum calipers

Since then I have become the OE upgrade guru since I have pages and pages of OE equipment that'll bolt on and make drastic improvements to every aspect of an allready fantasticaly handeling and driving car.

 

Excellent information! Let get as much aftermarket info as possible. Im sure we don't need to stick with gm stuff either. The bmw stuff i want to go for is from the high performance 7 series which is much larger and heavier than our cars (at least it looks it). But indeed our stock T/A brakes are small. Im sure im not the only one to be scared because of fade.

 

It's the spindles and built in slider rails on this era of GM products that make it dificult to just bolt bigger brakes on. Late B body brakes look perfect but the spindle wont swap on with the rotor and caliper, and since the F body spindle is unique it needs to be modified by trimming those rails for clearance.

Bit then what keeps the pads in place? It's a real pain lol.

 

Too much of the younger generation (including me) are attracted to simple "bolt up" modifications which not only limit the availability but also cost a fortune. Take a look at older hot rod guys! They can and will fabricate and modify anything to go anywhere and can do it on the cheap side! I know for sure i can get the bmw setup to work, thats not an issue, but its to find a cheaper alternative to $1000 setups from members on here.
Keep on posting guys!

 

heres my question.
so we have a bad spindle for brake swaps, but whats to stop you from getting a bmw rotor and caliper, then having a shop make it so that you can bolt the two together?
it really doesnt seem like it would be all that difficult if you knew the right people.
then again, i dont really mess around with brakes that much.
i am probably missing something


did you ever get it working?

 

Braking wasnt typicaly on the Old hot rod guys agenda
And what they built wasnt always very safe or effective.

I spent a long time searching out the best bolt-on upgrade for my mazda becausr there are endless opportunities to mess things up and even kill your self when doing this type of thing.

I am however going to attempt to mount some beautiful 4 pot RX-7 calipers on my car with 12.6" rotors using an adaptor bracket.

Remember that taking random parts to a shop and saying "make it work" is a good way to spend a fortune on being cheap. And those brakes do no good if the resulting offset puts the wheels into the fender or causes wicked bump steer ( or torque steer in my Mazdas case)

 

well i mean, the brake disk is still supposedly 1", so it cant space the wheel out but so much.
all you really need to do is come up with a way to mount the caliper.
calipers dont HAVE to be mounted at 11 o clock anyway. you can put the caliper wherever you bloody well please.

this bmw thing would be pretty cool if it worked

 

Those appear to a single piston caliper which is part of the problem with our brakes, unless it's a better caliper overall. The other factor is disc size.
A bigger disc has more leverage. I suppose if you were to use a bigger 4th gen or corvette disc with this... Dunno, doesn't seem much cheaper really once you add all the fabbing.

 

Your forgetting about the offset built into the rotor hat. If it's too deep then there'll be no room between it and the spindle and if it's too shallow the whole assembly will be mounted farther outboard then stock.

The current LS-1 setup spaces each wheel out slightly and thats using all GM parts.

 

I have just fitted C5 front brakes, it's hard to go past them IMHO. You will find that most BMWs use a single piston caliper btw. I doubt that you will find a cheaper system that is as good

 

anything ever materialize out of this?
id still love to see if it is possible to simply make a bracket that adapts the stock pattern to the bmw calipers...
i dont think it would be that hard if you have access to the metal and tooling.
i wish i had a garage!!!

 

i dont see how this swap woul dbe any different that all the other swaps. Mod the spindle, make a bracket and hub, and bolt it on?

 

bmw brakes are about the same as gm. Meaning they stop the same and stuff. from my experience with bmw brakes theyre the same. except bmw gots abs. on my trans am, my brakes are **** stop great. the bmws brakes are ok, considering the abs helps the most

 

You seem to be missing some info dude, if you think your stock F body brakes are great try turning a couple laps or even a few hard stops on the street or hauling a quick car down to a stop at the strip.

At 10.5" diameter and well under an inch thick the stockers WILL fade quickly simply because there is not enough rotor or pad to absorb thermal energy.

Yeah a functional stock 3rd gen system is just fine but under hard driving they fall short.

Remember the brakes the OP is talking about come stock on a massive 7 series sedan and are designed for atleast moderate track use, that capacity bolted to a much lighter (3400 lb) car equals respectable capacity.

 

has anyone tried saab brakes? idk anything about them, but step into one and hold on

 

i dont know the saab bolt pattern, but the thing is bmw's use a very similar 5x120mm bolt pattern. 4.75" = 120.65 mm so you can see that its only 0.65 mm off which makes bmw stuff work well on gm cars.

generally speaking, saabs are pretty small cars compared to bmw's
its all about finding the biggest car and taking brakes off of that.

the 1LE brakes everyone is so fond of are simply modified b-body brakes.

 

i dont believe that b-bodies used a pbr dual piston caliper. i think the only common thing between the b body and 1le front brake set-up is the rotor diameter.

 

I believe that was his point The rotor is the most important part of any brake system, multi piston calipers are nice and all but they will never help an under sized (under massed actualy) rotor.

 

ok-thanks for walking me through that. i thought his point was that 1le brakes were simply modified b-body brakes.

 

ya got me... but yeah, the rotor is exactly the same.

you could put the worlds best caliper on our stock diameter brakes and not see much improvement, if any at all...
however you could put our stock caliper on a 14.5" rotor and see massive improvement.
there would still be a lot left if you put a better caliper on, but IMO the rotor probably has the biggest effect on brakes

i have a 84 caprice with the 12" rotors and i can tell you for sure that with stock calipers, stock braking system, and a heavy *** car, it still stops better than my camaro, even with stock type pads... my camaro has the hawks pads and that helped a lot, but its still nowhere near as good as the b-body, which is funny because the caprice weighs almost a full 1000 lbs more

 

Its interesting you mention this. It's a very common swap for the 97-03 Grand Prix guys to pick up the caliper bracket and rotors from a 2000+ impala/monte carlo. They use the same pads, same calipers, but bigger (1.5" or so) rotors. I noticed a huge difference in stopping power when I did this.

Since you are grabbing further out from the center on a big rotor, the brakes will require less force to stop the same amount

 

psh who needs good brakes? thats what the sandbags at the end are for.
lol j/k

 

reminds me of a picture I have hanging over my desk at work:

 

Just pointing out that 04-06 GTO brakes use 5x120mm bolt pattern and are dual piston PBR brakes. I just have no idea what the calipers would go for. Might be able to get some stock ones relatively cheaply from someone who has put on a big brake kit. Check ls1gto.com

 

the point is this.
torque = force x distance.
assuming a nearly constant force, the only way to increase stopping torque is to increase the distance between the centerline of the axle and the brake pad.
a bigger rotor accomplishes this beautifully.
2, 4, and 6 piston calipers help increase force, and distribute the force more evenly, but the fact remains that unless you change piston size [diameter of the piston], the force will remain nearly constant... per given force on the brake pedal that is

 

i do believe that we all get the point about rotor diameter.