Floorman279

iTrader: (11)

got a real nice bonus from my job, and already have a good built motor and rear......figured i nice set of brakes would look cool........i want a 4 wheel set, because i kinda would like for the front and rear calipers to match.....now i considered just getting 4 new fbody calipers, because mine are 12 years old and one caliper has asiezed slider pin and am semi worried that they are sticking. but gmpartsdirect they want 800 with shipping inclueded for the calipers.....add another 400 for rotars and pads from any sponsor and im at 1200.....figured for and 6-800, i could have a real cool looking modern muscle car look.....was considering wilwood, but read in another post that the wilwoods mess with the tcs....so abs and tcs need to be disabled which i dont want.....so what brake kits out there kick *** and allow me to stick with my 4 channel? thanks....again, if im doing this, the front and rear calipers must match

therealcreeper

iTrader: (37)

what size wheels do you have?

you can get c5 front calipers for $150-250 depending new/used, conversion brackets for $200, brakemotive drilled/slotted rotors with pads for $165 shipped (have to see if they can combine a c5 front set and fbody rear set), and have everything powdercoated pretty so it matches. or just rebuild and have the stock calipers powdercoated with the brakemotive setup.

Floorman279

iTrader: (11)

no aftermarket yet....just 17s...not sure if i go 18s or not....just weighing my options.....if i went c5 tho the front calipers wont match the rears

lees02WS6

iTrader: (5)

There's no benefit to running the C5 rears. They are identical to the f-body rears.

As far as brake kits, most I've seen are front only. The stock rears, and any c-cliped aftermarket solid axle, are problematic for fixed caliper applications. The principle of the stock floating caliper is that it moves with the disc.

Put a fixed caliper on the stock axle, and you'll get pad knock back.

therealcreeper

iTrader: (37)

That's why I recommended getting it powdercoated, so that the color matches at least. You don't need super upgraded brakes in the rear.

Floorman279

iTrader: (11)

yea but even our painted stock calipers look plain jane......i will be going with a fab 9 inch by the end of the summer......doesthis open up my options at all? i know a lot of companies sell a lot of different brakes sets for 9 inches but will the fit a mwc 9 inch?

Floorman279

iTrader: (11)

wait if i do front c5 brakes, can i use c5 rear brake calipers on the rear and still keep my abs, tcs, and parking brakes? i know i wont gain anything but then the front and rears will match

Floorman279

iTrader: (11)

and if this is possible, when i buy rotors for the rear, do i buy fbody rotors or c5 rotors?

MeentSS02

iTrader: (11)

What do you mean the front and rears will match? If you mean they'll match in that they came off the same type of car (front and rears off of a Corvette), then yes, they'll match, but they won't look the same front to rear. It'll look damn near identical to what you have now...the C5 rear is the same puny brake caliper as the F-body rear. The C5 front has full width stiffening ribs, but other than that will look identical (although they are pressure cast vs. gravity cast and use smaller pistons).

Upgrading the brakes for looks is fine and all, but you'll be hard pressed to get something better than the stock f-body brakes on a street car without spending tons of money (and by tons of money, I'm talking about something more than just a C5 upgrade). The rears are the hardest part to make look the part yet function correctly on a solid axle rear, especially with c-clips. C-clip eliminators will help, but people have still reported pad knockback even with eliminators when they swapped to fixed calipers (the stock calipers are floating). I guess you could try to do a floating rotor, but you'd be talking some serious $$$, and you'd also need to come up with another solution for the parking brake.

Floorman279

iTrader: (11)

ok im in the middle of doing some research and looking at differnet pics now......after looking, the front fbody and front c5calipers do appear to be the same looking just about......now my next question is, Why is it worth going to a c5 caliper in the front.......what makes the front caliper of a c5 better than an fbody?

Floorman279

iTrader: (11)

oooooooooooooooooooooooooo ok now things are getting cleared up......when talking about the red c5 calipers that say corvette, assuming these were found on the z06s.....i thought that the front AND REAR calipers said corvette on them......but after finding one on ebay and looking at a z06 i saw, the fronts only said corvette and were bigger than the rears, assuming because the fronts are two piston and rear single piston..........so since i thought that both the front and rear c5 calipers were red and said corvette, i thought that they were the same size.....since i thought they were the same size as the fronts, i wanted to put the c5 rears on my car as well......after comparing them to fbodys, i no longer see a difference...

so now my new question is, how can i accomplish the following.....

same size front and rear calipers
still be able to have abs/tcs/parking brake?

even if this is possible but very expensive, please share with me the results.......idk, i just kinda want matching front and rear calipers

Floorman279

iTrader: (11)

o and i will be getting a MWC 9" by the end of the summer, so matching front and rear calipers that will work on a 9" is what im looking for

MeentSS02

iTrader: (11)

Same size front and rear calipers? That's easy - you won't.

Even a C6ZO6 uses different size front and rear calipers - you just don't need a huge caliper for the rear. Rear brake bias on a front heavy car (like an f-body) will bring all sorts of issues you won't want to deal with. It won't stop worth a damn either.

The closest I've ever seen to what you are describing is a Gen III/IV Viper, and even those use different (smaller) pistons in the rear, and that's a car with a 49/51 F/R weight bias.

What you are trying to do will look great, but the function just won't be there.

1lejohn

iTrader: (9)

Wilwood has some nice kits. $$$.

The stock calipers with good rotors, pads and teflon braided lines are hard to beat. For example Hawk HPS pads , DBA rotors and Goodridge lines. If you get creative add some cooling ducts and hoses to the frt rotors

Floorman279

iTrader: (11)

doesnt have to be exactly the same size, just roughly the same size and same looking....yea bit with the wilwoods you lose your ebrake......or is that only with the rotors the provide in the kit.....could you maybe go with a lower quality rotor that does have provisions for and ebrake

Carlos01SS

iTrader: (4)

You know it's funny you bring up aftermarket front and rear brakes with our 4th-gen f-bodies, GM High Tech Performance has had issues doing the same thing with their sti killer, they first started with SSBC front brakes with factory rears, stopped pretty good but they wanted better stopping power so they went with gosh, forgot who but the aftermarket rear brakes totally locked up every time due to hard breaking, so they decided to switch with the Baer setup, 6-piston fronts & 4-piston rears, and again they couldn't get the rears to work correctly cuz they kept locking up compared to the fronts so everytime they took the sTi killer to the track, everytime they had to replace the aftermarket rear brakes with the stock rears and kept the big front brakes on and it stopped a LOT better.

GMHTP is still trying to figure out how to make both aftermarket front and rear brakes work effectively, and so far the aftermarket brakes work MUCH better if the factory rear brakes are used and the front brakes are changed over to the newer bigger calipers/rotors.

Makes sense, as I recall, our front/rear weight is like 59/41?
big rear breaks don't work too well for our cars cuz well, our weight difference is pretty big, and big rear breaks are well, too big for our cars?

lees02WS6

iTrader: (5)

I recall about 8 years ago, when I was new on this board, someone who races mentioned the stock rear ls1 f-body brakes were "a little too helpful".

lees02WS6

iTrader: (5)

and here you go, it was trackbird

https://ls1tech.com/forums/suspensio...rs-my-t-2.html