put a set of two piston calipers into a single piston caliber car? Just curious, was flipping through the ole' haynes today and saw it, so was wondering what ya'll thought and if anyone has done it... whats involved in this job and would the performance be much better.

 

I can personally tell you for a fact that it is not needed in our lightweight cars- unless you are doing constant roadracing temps- even then you should upgrade beeter than the stock dual caliper system rotors for heat dissipation.

Stock iron single piston calipers will put you through the windshield if correctly balanced with the proper PV, brake pads, braided lines, and rotor style & quality- and most importantly TIRES. Most of the guys on the suspension board that have installed Baer systems and such still run crappy tires and never see the potential stopping power of their systems. My little V6 will stop as fast if not faster than any of theirs in normal street temp use (and AutoX)- I would sufffer at the road track though.

Additional- Apple to apples, cost wise, you will get much better value just upgrading your current system. The cost of PBR calipers combined with new or customised spindles to make them work are still not as good as a built single piston system with all the goodies. Granted, PBR calipers with all the goodies compared to iron calipers is better for heat duration- but expensive and heavier rotatation mass.

 

AGood beat me to it! The cost level is dependant on how you get the parts; if you find a junkyard with a 1LE brake setup, and you can get it all for $50, hell, go for it. Don't forget you need those spindles, too! So let me cover the "work involved" aspect, as far as I've understood it. I've never found a 1LE setup in a junkyard, but if I do, you can bet I'm grabbing it that same day.

Lesson learned after many times: Never think "Wow, I'll come back tomorrow and get that!" It'll be gone when you come back. I always go to the yard with a $100 or so stashed in my car for "emergency" situations like that! I'm still angry about that perfect split-rear-bench folding seatback...

But you'd probably be much better off rebuilding your brake system. Still got the original 3 brake hoses? (Front left, front right, rear body-to-axle) If so, replace them!! I'll put up a pic later of my cracked brake hose, I replaced it in '96. Stainless might be a waste, might not- I didn't do it for two reasons- 1, cost. 2, no way to inspect the hose for cracks. As I posted in the suspension board, after replacing my old hoses with new ones, my braking improved!! I didn't expect that. I just expected to stay alive by not rupturing a hose.

Flush the system with something like http://www.eastwoodcompany.com/aspfi...0.asp?T1=49040 or, the *** of all tools, the V12 injector from http://www.brakebleeder.com . (Find it cheaper online at http://www.toolparadise.com ) Get new rotors if yours are getting thin (thick=better heat transfer), better pads, and rebuild the rear system. Get funky and make custom brake cooling ducting, aim the "air" at the rotors. Drilled/slotted rotors are a waste of coin; they look flashy and cool, but that's it. If you get frisky, paint the calipers with cast iron gray engine paint.

Remember too that after you install new wheel bearings into the new rotors, and after you pack them with grease and reinstall them, to check the wheel bearing endplay a week or so after driving the car. All that extra grease will have squished out, and adds a bit of "looseness" to the front wheels, that can be felt thru the steering AND thru braking (wheels will wobble a bit feeling like warped rotors).

 

I installed new wheel bearings and never did check the endplay after a week. I just followed the GM manual never thought I had to do that.

 

Her's where peple don't understand about drilled and slotted rotors-

1)for overall stopping distance- they generally will not have any improvement
However, on repetitive stops the WILL reduce fade and help maintain the initial stop peformance where stock rotors will loose performance.

2) combine drilled of slotted rotors with the proper pads and they will show improvements.
Use a stock pad on a stock rotor and a stock pad on a performance rotor- basically no better stopping distance unless repetitive fade comes into play (Like discribed in #1)
Use performance carbon pads with slotted of drilled rotors and you WILL notice a difference between race pads and stock rotors compared to race pads and slotted/drilled rotors. Your stopping distance will be better with the drilled/slotted rotors because they off gas the performance carbon pads and give stronger constiant bite under hard braking (aka- better sweet spot)

3) Hers's the clincher- Drilled rotors will provide a sooner "initial bite" of the brake system giving better control over the binder- where as slottled rotors will come on virtually the same as solid rotors (Keep in mind the drill pattern is crucial here- not all drilled rotors are equal.

Now when hard on the binders- both will give a deeper speetspot without locking the wheels, however- slotted rotors will give better performance over drilled rotors due to surface space and slot gas-scraping design.

In conclusion- drilled and slotted style rotors can help in chasis tuning and control when entering a corner. A better rear initial bite will allow a more stabile chasis attitude through trailbraking and less frontend dive (less dramatic weight transfer)

 

Could you get a set of 98+ 4th gen brakes to fit? They switched to 2 piston those years, and should be enough in the scrapyards to find fairly cheap. I know alot of 3rd and 4th gen suspension parts are interchangeable, but not sure if you can swap brakes.

Also from what I've read cross drilled rotors are not beneficial at all. First they crack easier because the drilling weakens the rotor -except for Porsche's because the holes are cast in the rotor, not drilled in as most aftermarket rotors are. 2nd they hurt stopping distance because you have less contact area between the pad and rotor. Rotors were originally cross drilled back in the day to help in the outgassing of the pads, but modern pads to not outgas like old ones, hence no use for the drilled holes. There's a good dissertation on cross drilled rotors here: http://corner-carvers.com/altimathread.php.html Its alot of reading, but an excellent thread.

 

Josh, yeah, you gotta go back and do it. Well; actually, just check the endplay first... that'll tell you if you've gotta play with 'em or not. I overpack the snot out of my bearings so I always wind up with extra endplay after a week or so (by the time I remember to check 'em). I bought that grease-gun attachment for packing bearings; next re-pack I'm gonna try it out.

 

thanx for that advice everyone, i wasn't gonna do the drilled or slotted, although what i did notice was that going w/ a set of slotted and dempled rotors would be cheaper per rotor than midas would sell me if i got it from tirerack but my prob right now is that the rotors are getting thin and are in need or some replacing. I had the pads done quite some time ago, so i think this'll be my first time hcanging rotors on this car, but doesn't seem anymore difficult than the ole' cessnas were (maybe less so). Questoin, does the hub assembly (lug bolts attach to the new rotor permentantly, so when i'd discard my old rotors and hubs the new one would have hubs on there?) haven't done it before, so i'm a lil' curious, going to autozone today to get the rotors however, so i'll probably find out beforesomeone responds, but we'll see....

 

Only thing I can comment back is "there are those of use who read about it and there are those of us that have tried almost every combo out there"

As for drilled rotors cracking? I have never had a drilled rotor crack from hard street use or light track use. Cheap quality(inferior metal) rotors will crack and rotors not drilled with sufficiant patterns will crack. Any quality rotrs in all out racing temps of 1200+ will crack (street cars and autoX are lucky to reach temps of 800+. Buy GOOD QUALITY drilled and/or slotted rotors and you will never have a problem.

Every modern day Trans Am Seires racecars (only the ultimate in full bodied race cars) all run slotted rotors- why? because they off gas & clean the pads as well as aid in cooling. This info is factual and unargueable. If slots were bad- they why do they run them.

 

i'm one who does much reading and not as much doing...LOL. i did read up on the crossdrilled brake rotors, and heard that they were more prone to cracking than slotted rotors would be, it also supported all the stuff about he trans am cars and their slotted rotors. I'm sure the reason that people think the cross drilled rotors will crack is probably because ricers demanded the style of cross drilled rotors,they were put into mass production for a cheap price and the result was cheap quality, that after time will heat, cool, heat, supercool and crack. But if you were to buy something that's actually worth it's weight, i'd have to believethat the cross drilled rotors would hold up just fine, and if ur just gonna drive around the streets (despite me not seeing the need for them) i think they would work perfectly until they finallywore out.


P.S. bought my rotors today, and was glad to see that the hub assmebly is made into the rotors, news thats good to know.

 

Tom, I remember when I replaced the wheel bearings my dad was like those don't need to be replaced. I looked at the cage around the rollers on the old one and it was made of PLASTIC! I thought that was wrong and I put on BCA bearings and packed them by hand with Red Line's grease. When we talk about end play do we mean how much the rotor tilts in and out? I figured spinning the rotor around enough would get the thing set right. Perhaps when I am done with summer school here and go home I can check it out. I'd just like to be clear on what end play is.

 

I have considered writing HOtRod TV and asking why they put wheel bearing on so lose and never say one word about checking htem later.

On my Virago I went from stock solid to sloted rotors and it was a dream come true. I can stop when I want and I never find myself in a panic diving into a corner to fast.

Course I have never tried any on a car but would like to.

Matt

 

well, i picked up the rotors today, i'm praying that the bearing aren't scorned, but my best guess would say that they would be, so i guess i'll be doing bearings too....haven't started the project yet however, atleast new rotors come with new races so i won't have to worry about having to re-seat a new race by hand (is a bitch to get in straight w/o damanging the race rails), so i'll be startin the project probably at mid week or so. Q for everyone, do you think i'd need new seals for the bearing? i'll look over the haynes on it again, the procedure seems simple enough, so i know it's gonna take about 3 days hopefully not though, but what else in addition to rotors should i look at...remember that my calipers and pads are brand new from midas a whopping 80 bux a caliper still pissed about that.

 

I cannot imagine replacing the races on my own, I would totally destroy the race seating area. If I had to replace my races when I replaced my rotors I would have had a machine shop do it. Anyways, if you are just replacing bearings it won't take that long, especially if you have new rotors I would assume they have new races in the rotors. As for the oil seals I would replace them, they are inexpensive and you mind as well not cut corners. I had never done wheel bearings before in my life and I thought it was relatively easy when I did it. Make sure when greasing your bearings and the inside of the rotor not to get any dirt in there. Dirt is your enemy and if it gets in there it'll wear down your rollers and score bearing surfaces. I just used a good brake cleaner to get the inside of the rotor clean and let it dry. Good luck man.

 

yeh, should be an easy one, although nothing on my car ever is...if it's a 10 minute job it takes 20, if it should take a day, it'll take a week, etc etc. i'll probably start it off this coming week, cause i need to drop my car at the shop soon (keep putting it off, and off and off again...)so, thinking i'll pick up the bearings and seals and be done w/ it.

 

Well, I will admit in this case I am going by more of reading from the experienced, then actually being experienced myself. I really only drag race, haven't gotten into road racing or autox yet. But I do know quite a few 4th Gen guys who autox or road race, and I'd say roughly 3/4 of them have had problems with drilled rotors cracking.

 

LOL, Gumby!!

Josh, yeah, that's basically the endplay, but you should have the tire bolted to the rotor for more "leverage". For endplay, you raise the front of the car up, then put one hand on top of the tire, and one hand on the bottom of the tire. Then wiggle the tire by pushing/pulling on the top/bottom- don't wiggle from side to side. You'll feel the end play. There should be some end play, the tire shouldn't be rock-solid in place. If it is, you overtightened the wheel bearings and they could be binding.

A rough shaking should look- and even feel- like you're not moving the tire at all, but you can feel/hear a little tiny thump "through" the tire. That's "perfect" end-play. It's the kind where you'll think the bearings were over-tightened at first... you'll have to keep wiggling the tire, and then you'll finally discover the bit of end play. (Assuming, of course, that the bearings aren't overtightened!) The thumping noise you hear/feel will be very "slight"...

Loose end-play will result in an obvious visual "wiggle" of the tire, or, an obvious thumping noise. To fix, you just yank the cotter pin, back off the spindle nut, and follow the normal (inital) procedure- retighten to 12 ft/lbs while turning the tire forward, loosen the nut, screw it down hand-tight, and insert a new cotter pin- loosening the nut (if necessary) to align the cotter pin hole with the castellations.

My original outer wheel bearings had a plastic cage, too. I got new rotors out of a junkyard- poor guy, "motor n/g" was written on the windshield, but it looked like he just dumped a ton of money to have the front brakes redone (new pads, new rotors, even the calipers looked new)!

I got the passenger side off okay without dropping the outer bearing. When I took the driver's side off, I was crouching down, moved my foot, fell backward, and the outer bearing dropped right into the sand. I replaced both the inner & outer bearing on that side, both came with metal cages on 'em. I replaced the races, too... tapped 'em out with a punch. My dad had two old pipe sections lying around that he used for the wheel bearings on our long-gone '75 Nova and '76 Ford LTD, they were the same size i needed for our bearing races.

I always get new front grease seals for the wheel bearings when I repack them. (I repack the bearings every time I change the front pads). Like Josh said, it's one of those things that's so cheap to replace (like $1.50) that it doesn't make sense to leave the old one in there. And I'm pretty sure it's CR (Chicago Rawhide) #19753... that's hanging around in my memory. CR2032 is also in my mind though... hm. Okay, don't trust my memory... use whatever the parts store monkey digs up!