Hey have a friend that just upgraded the brakes on his C4 does anyone know of a conversion for the calipers?

 

Yes, bracket dims are available on the board. What did he have? JL9 12" .91 wide rotors or J55 13" 1.1" wide rotors??

 

Hey twin he said they are 12". Do you know the exact link to get to them or member who makes them?

 

try flynbye.com, bugbrakeupgrade.com
and\or lukeskaff.com

 

lukesyaff should have the dims, the brackets are the same for the J55 and JL9 setup. The differences are in the rotor, the calipers (wider) and abutments (wider and drilled for a different bolt hole location)

I have to say, the JL9 brakes aren't all that great. If you can, upgrade to the J55, same amount of work but better result. For both you need to turn a 1LE disc into a hub, it will not work with a regular disc to hub (which will work w/ C5 conversions) and as such you need new outer bearings at least since the 1LE uses larger ones.

 

Im the one who just upgraded and im giving him the calipers if we can find a cheap solution. Its not necessarily of what is the best, its more of a temporary conversion until he decides if he wants to later move to an even bigger setup like c5 calipers.

As for your reference to a spindle change, that isnt wasted effort toward the c4 stock calipers because it will also support other brake upgrades down the road because the bolt pattern is the same even for new camaros and corvettes.

This upgrade wont be worth it if we have to spend 20 hours of labor and 400 bucks, we are looking to find a solution that would be under 200 for everything except the calipers (we have them). My

Can it be done for under 200 if we already have the calipers, rotors, and pads...

 

Then the C5 option is cheaper because you will not have to buy 1LE rotors and mill them down, you can use the stock stuff that came out. No need do redo bearings if you are on the cheap. All you need is the rbackets, loaded calipers and rotors.

 

i had the 12" JL9 brakes on my 71 Nova, and they worked awesome stop after stop for 3 years. fit under some 15" wheels, too. that was the hardest braking car i've ever owned- once i got the proportioning valve for the stock rear drums dialed in, the car just squatted down and stopped with no drama from highway speeds.

except for the Russel braided beake lines, Wilwood prop valve, and reman Cardone master cylinder i used all brand new GM parts and had less than $400 into the whole setup. i made my own mounting brackets out of some scrap steel i had laying around so that only cost me about an hour of my time.

regarding the hub: why does everyone insist on carving up a 1LE rotor when making a hub for these swaps when an 80's Caprice light duty rotor uses the same bearings as the 1LE rotor, has the same bolt pattern and center hub diameter, and can be had from any junkyard for a few bucks?

 

That's the first time I've heard of using an 80's Caprice hub. Maybe that's why everyone talks about machining the 1le hub/rotor. No-one's heard of it!

 

the 1LE rotor is just a Caprice HD rotor with the smaller bolt pattern and smaller hub diameter... all 80's Caprices use the same wheel bearings that were used in the 1LE (BR6 inner, BR3 outer).. the only thing that might be different is that the Caprice might use 7/16" wheel studs instead of the 12mm studs in the F body, but the metric stud has a bigger diameter so the hub could be drilled out for the 12mm studs if that matters to you.