Project: Custom Big Brakes

[Jeff@Carbon6]

Well, I've been slowly getting things together for the brake conversion on my '91. Originally I had a purchased a set of Brembo F40 calipers for the front and Porsche 993 calipers for the rear. I have sense sold those because I was able to get my hands on these:

There are of a 2005 VW Touareg and are the same as they put on Porshce Cayennes. They are 6 piston Brembo monoblock design and are almost 15" across the mouth of the caliper.

Here is a picture showing the F40 caliper in the middle and the touareg/Cayenne caliper on the left.

The rears I decided to swap out the 993 Porsche/Brembo's (upper right) for the newer 996 Porsche/Brembo mono block ones. These were off a 2002 Boxster:

I was able to spend a few nights in my friends machine shop milling out some custom hats for the two piece rotors (Thanks Kevin). I was able to build in the hub-centric ring and adjust the thickness for a perfect offset.

Still waiting for the custom rotors from Coleman Machine. I decided to go with a 14" x 1.25" in the front and a 13" x .9" in the rear. Should fill in the huge voids I have behind the new rims :biggrin:

I should have the rotors and other hardware in next week. I'll start working on the caliper mounting brakets then.

Jeff

 

[JDMnsxR]

man... too bad some show hasn't video documented your WHOLE nsx build... i have so much respect for you... as nearly nothing on your car seems to just simply be an 'off the shelf' mod but truly custom to your own taste, need, and preference.... BIG KUDOS....

 

[len3.8]

Vroom, I will be watching as well. I have a set sitting on a workbench as well. I want to do the same thing.

I have seen these on other cars, as well as on our Cayenne, on other cars, no one seems to be able to dial in the Bias... These brakes will make you lock up most likely, abs or not. They will through you through the windshield, Big reds have nothing on these...
Please keep me in the loop.. PM if you would like...
Thanks
Len

 

[Jeff@Carbon6]

Vroom, I will be watching as well. I have a set sitting on a workbench as well. I want to do the same thing.

I have seen these on other cars, as well as on our Cayenne, on other cars, no one seems to be able to dial in the Bias... These brakes will make you lock up most likely, abs or not. They will through you through the windshield, Big reds have nothing on these...
Please keep me in the loop.. PM if you would like...
Thanks
Len

The one thing I have going for me is an almost 0 offset on my wheels. I can keep the offset of the caliper in line with the factory tabs. I hope. My friend is an engineer at Oshkosh Truck. He is helping me with all the mounts. I'm sure I'll be going through quite a few pad compounds to find something that will work on the street.


On the down side, I'm not sure how the fluid displacement will effect the master cylinder pressure and feel of the brake pedal.

Jeff

 

[TURBO2GO]

man... too bad some show hasn't video documented your WHOLE nsx build... i have so much respect for you... as nearly nothing on your car seems to just simply be an 'off the shelf' mod but truly custom to your own taste, need, and preference.... BIG KUDOS....

Daniel your own is pretty sweet as well. The more I see your car the more I like that color. Vroom, don't you have to replace the master cylinder with this? and what happens to the ABS system? this seems like a real mishmash of parts....

 

[Jeff@Carbon6]

I know it's hard to see the finished product because, at this point, the parts still have their indentity from the vehicles they are off. This by no means will be a simple brake swap. As I see it, the parts I have are universal to a point. They are the best within the package they offer. The Brembo castings used for the calipers are similar (if not the same) at what is used on the Murcielago, Carrera GT, and other supercars. I would not make any compromise to the vehicle. I'm even looking to retain parking brake fuction. I'm pretty sure I will be able to use the stock master cylinder etc. My goal is to not make the car feel like it has aftermarker brakes. A nice medium pedal. That is what may warrent a larger master cylinder... we'll see. :biggrin:

The front rotors came in today:

 

[len3.8]

On another car, we had to adapt a much larger Master cylinder, we used the Mercedes 23mm, from a commercial truck, it pushed more than enough fluid.

Again, I think the bias will be the biggest issue,
The front calipers are just plain Massive, I have the rear Cayenne calipers, I plan to use them on the rear of my car...

Let me know if you need any part numbers or Porsche part numbers or prices...

 

[Juice]

Isn't there a point where bigger "isn't" better?? What is the weight penalty here? How are you going to modulate the step-in feel? Better bust out the proportioning valve and hook up some actuator motors to it so you can adjust the thing from inside your car. It's only as over the top as every other crazy thing you attempt. And succeed at thus far.


P.S. - I need friends like yours. Mine can't even learn to use Velcro.

 

[Jeff@Carbon6]

Len: I would like to pick your brain sometime. It sounds like you have worked through some of these issues already.

I've been using a cool naritive by Dan Wagner (from Circle Track magazine). He has a nice breakdown of the physics behind brake effects on the vehicle. http://sports.racer.net/brake_bias.htm He also has an interactive spreadsheet for calculating forces and bias etc. http://sports.racer.net/docs/brakes.xls.
It's kind of cool to play around with.

Jeff

On another car, we had to adapt a much larger Master cylinder, we used the Mercedes 23mm, from a commercial truck, it pushed more than enough fluid.

Again, I think the bias will be the biggest issue,
The front calipers are just plain Massive, I have the rear Cayenne calipers, I plan to use them on the rear of my car...

Let me know if you need any part numbers or Porsche part numbers or prices...

 

[Jeff@Carbon6]

Just an update... I spent some time mocking up the front calipers and rotors on the knuckle. Here it is on the bench:

I'm running into a mounting issue. The caliper mounting holes overlap the mounts on the knuckle.

Kevin and I came up with the idea of making a alluminum plug for the large 16mm hole in the caliper and re-mill the 12mm hole off center to match the knuckle.

I will end up boring about 1/8" of material into the caliper to get the holes to line up. I don't think it will be an issue because the caliper has almost 1/2" arround and is more that 3/4" thick.

The complete weight of the caliper, rotor, hat including pads etc. was just under 30 lb. I'm not sure what the factory cast iron caliper weigh with pads etc. Anybody know?

Jeff

 

[len3.8]

Jeff , just a thought, but if you are going to bore a hole off center or either, you may want to add metal first then bore.. I know that the metal seems to be thick enough.. Man, I wish I were able to lift my other car, I would post the pics of the caliper, where we added metal then drilled another hole... I am sure your way would work as well... Just a thought...

Looks good... Someone's been busy with airplane stripper....
By the way, did you see what the last set of these went for on ebay? Someone got a screaming deal...:wink:

 

[Jeff@Carbon6]

Looks good... Someone's been busy with airplane stripper....
By the way, did you see what the last set of these went for on ebay? Someone got a screaming deal...:wink:

I know someone was selling 1 for $250. There is a guy selling sets at $795 shipped. I didn't strip mine... these were off a Touareg, they came with this dull charcoal finish.

 

[len3.8]

I know someone was selling 1 for $250. There is a guy selling sets at $795 shipped. I didn't strip mine... these were off a Touareg, they came with this dull charcoal finish.

Cool finish to have as a basis for a custom coat or paint job..
I pm'd you back... I will be home late this eve.. if you respond anymore..
Len

 

[da3dalus]

Wow... Really cool project man, as if we expected anything different!

The only sad thing is we all know we wont be able to recreate it on our own cars..

Props, i look forward to seeing updates and some sexy colored brakes in the near future!

 

[Jeff@Carbon6]

Wow... Really cool project man, as if we expected anything different!

The only sad thing is we all know we wont be able to recreate it on our own cars..

Props, i look forward to seeing updates and some sexy colored brakes in the near future!

Yeah. I was thinking I could come up with a bracket for these. Not the case now. It's to bad, you can pick up these calipers very reasonably from salvage yards and eBay.

 

[OneRedNSX]

stupid question here:

why can't you make a bracket that will just clock the caliper a few degrees further around?

Keeping in mind I haven't jumped far enough into the NSX research of this, just wonderin from all the other brake conversion's i've researched on other cars...

not tryin to say you didn't think of that, just mainly lookin for a reason why it is a bad idea...

 

[Jeff@Carbon6]

stupid question here:

why can't you make a bracket that will just clock the caliper a few degrees further around?

Keeping in mind I haven't jumped far enough into the NSX research of this, just wonderin from all the other brake conversion's i've researched on other cars...

not tryin to say you didn't think of that, just mainly lookin for a reason why it is a bad idea...

Good question. We actually tried that. Because of the the way the knuckle mounting ears are cast, it makes it impossible to rotate it enough to get clean access to both mounting holes. Also, The mounts on the knuckle will push the caliper outward. It would work if we ground a bunch off the caliper and knuckel. After all things being considered, I decided to modify the caliper and not the knuckle (the holes are very close) and I can take it back to stock if I want to.

 

[amgnsx]

Vroom

Very impressive!!!

You got tooo much talent.. Question is.. what dont u know? :smile:

hehe

keep us posted please.

Cheers

 

[Jeff@Carbon6]

Just had a chance to mock up everything on the car and take some pics.

Here are the front calipers all preped for paint

I used the G2 brake caliper kit. The paint is a special ceramic epoxy that is supposed to help remove heat. here the are after two coats with the brush the kit recommends to use

You can't tell from the picture but the paint started to sag and create some runs. I sanded out all the runs and sprayed the last coat out of a spray gun. Color sanded and polished them.

The G2 product is very good. It sets up rock hard at room temp in 24 hours. If you tried to use a spray can product I don't think you could get as good of a build up.

I found some oem hardware from the parts catalog to replace the bolts that held the calipers to the knuckle. Had to come from Japan, but now all the mounting hardware matches... as yes I am anal about stuff like that :biggrin:

I just dropped the car off the jacks so it didn't get a chance to settle down. It's setting about 1 1/4" higher that it normaly does.

still not sure if I'm going to have the rotor hats anadized black. I'll wait to get the rears done and go from there...

Jeff

 

[da3dalus]

wowza!!!

I have also used that G2 stuff and also had problems with runs. I eneded up have the calipers powdercoated. I didnt think about using a paint spray gun.

They look mean! Now let that suspension settle, roll it out into the sun and take us some nice pics!!!

 

[DRIFTER]

Did you figure out if there is going to be any break balance issues? Are u using a rear rotor that is same size as the front?

 

[Osiris_x11]

Model 5's, mmm mmm good!

Nice wheels...

 

[Jeff@Carbon6]

I'm going to start with the Hawk HPS pad in the front and the HP Plus in the rear. The HP plus pads have a slightly higher friction rating. I'm hoping this will help balance it out. If not I'll try ceramic pads in the front (less friction than the HPS).

The rear rotors are 13 x .9 the fronts are 14 x 1.25.

Did you figure out if there is going to be any break balance issues? Are u using a rear rotor that is same size as the front?

 

[da3dalus]

at first glance i thought they looked small... but the more i look at them, and consider how big the front wheel is... they are ginormous!!! 14" is the way to go!

 

[ashman]

That is very impressive, reminds me of the Novitec Ferrari setup.