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Who's done drag brakes? I been thinking of changing the brakes just to cut some weight. I have looked at a couple different kits but undecided. I noticed with the kits I looked at our factory brake lines won't hook directly to the calipers. Where are you guys getting adapters? Any input ,advice ,pro and cons would be appreciated and might help me make my mind up if I want to do them or not.
Thanks!
I'll let you know something about the rear brakes. The 93-97 LT1 cars had an OE rotor from factory that the center piece of it is thin like a stamped steel, unlike most other rotors including aftermarket ones for the 93-97 where the center piece of the rotor is like .160" - .200" thick.
And this makes the OE gm 93-97 rotors very light. I weighed them and i didn't keep the info but they were very light, not even 1 lb different to most lightweight race rotors that are still suitable for the street, like the strange etc. This is what i'm running on the rear of my car because it was a very low mile car when i bought it and it still had the factory special light OE gm rotors on it, as it rolled out the factory. When i realized how light they are i kept them. If you can find a pair of them and switch to lt1 calipers you will gain little to nothing from true race rotors on the rear.
Now the front brakes are a complete different story ...
I was thinking of switching to the lt1 brakes for the rear but didn't know they were that close to race brake weight and leaning towards the strange brakes for the front. Thanks fellas for your input !
Interesting.. I am in exact same boat and actually called yesterday going to order TBM front brakes.. the kit weighs a mere 25lbs, box, stickers the entire outfit for both sides...
But, this is what I learned when I called yesterday about lead time.. Now this is me playing telephone with some info I wasn't real clear on as I wasn't expecting the info I got so was not prepared to question. Maybe some of our brighter forum members will shed some light NICELY please...
He said I would not be happy with their front brakes unless I did the rears. Seems they want to proportion more stopping to the rear. The rears are another $1400 and no real weight savings - too much for me
I did a little more research and their caliper is interchangeable with strange and both are 4 piston so in my simple mind I could get the $500 strange kit from MWC on the rear and be good
Power brakes are too much pressure for their caliper so I would have to do a manual swap - no big deal I was considering it anyway for the extra real estate under the hood.
He recommended a master cylinder with 15/16 - 7/8 bore for about 125 lbs of leg pressure with a 6:1 ratio
Never simple is it Just darn glad I called before ordering... I know a lot of folks will answer and have opinions on what I was told brakes are just something I am not interested in "testing" at 150mph.... So hopefully folks with real world experience with some combinations that are at the strip and running pretty quick times will chime in...
Never tried it,, but has anybody looked at some of the dirt track brake stuff for their drag car?
They have some nice Aluminum hubs, caliper mounts and uprights.. don't know what they weigh but they seem
light when your working on the car..
If your going with the Strange 4 piston drag brakes all the way around with a Strange master. You absolutely need to remove every brake line on the car. I mean all of them. All brake lines front and back have to be 3/16ths. All the soft lines need to be good premade braided lines. No rubber. I usually use Russel. Then you redrill your pedal arm. Don't go too much as to much is just as bad as not enough. You want the linkage going into the master to be as straight as possible while the brake is applied. I don't use a proportioning valve. Never needed it, but we don't foot brake our launches. There is a non adjustable one in the master. Critical to get the calipers spaced right with the shims. I believe the 7/8ths bore master is what you need but call strange to confirm due to I haven't done one in about a year. Got a little CRS going on at the moment.
You set your brakes up this way and you won't believe how good they will work, and you won't have to stand on them. You will be able to lock them up with ease with not a lot of foot pressure. You will think they are still power. Drive it on the street a lot. Never had any problems. Brakes are rock hard with 0 sponge.
I've read a lot of threads of people doing it different ways having many problems. Funny thing is if you ask Strange, this is exactly how they will tell you to do it. I asked years ago. Been doing it this way since.
For now I plan on running factory Lt1 brakes on the rear for sure ,I have some bought. Probably do the strange fronts and keep the power brakes for now. I may switch to the manual brakes later. Thanks TTur1996 for the detailed information on doing manual brakes. I may go to full manual later . A lot to spend at one time for sure. I'm trying to run 9s n/a and it's hard to do at my race weight. Thanks again everyone
Just so we're clear the lt1 rear rotors are only very light like i said when they are the factory OE rotor. For some reason all the aftermarket ones are heavier because the center piece where the studs are is a lot thicker. It looks like GM made them how they did to be light on purpose, and nobody has copied the design over probably because they can't do what GM did and they'd be too weak if they ran a thin stamped center like the factory GM lt1 rotors are.
. You need to find factory original rear rotors if you want them real light. And if you do find some and you compare them to an aftermarket rotor both visually and on a scale, you will then understand what i'm saying.
I did a quick search for you. I'm fairly sure these are oe factory rotors below just going from memory how mine look on my car. Look at the center of it how it looks like a stamped or forged piece and has a curved edge and it is very thin material once you see one in person, unlike most rotors which the center piece is a lot thicker material. It's a unique design for a brake rotor and it makes them very light.
Another oe rotor i found on ebay from a 96 4th gen... ( the ones above may be from a 3rd gen but they look very similar )
These are aftermarket rotors.... you can tell the difference between the oe rotors and aftermarket from the corner of the center piece being just squared off versus rounded off above
I should get them this week, snowed here over the weekend so it will be a few days. Thanks for the pictures. I've looked hard to find some old factory ones and that's what I supposed to be getting from a guy local to me .
Just to share I did used Strange 4 piston brakes front and back on the '67. I also bought a new master cylinder from them, and i ran all new lines.
This car stops really good, and even after 30-40 minutes of driving no fade. My old '98 Formula had really bad brake fade I wish I could go back in time and figure it out.
Have used Aerospace and Strange both work fine. Just remember you will have to modify the front brake caliper mounting holes making it impossible to go back to stock brakes. Also Aerospace can use stock sealed hubs. They have a kit that has an aluminum hub hat that you bolt the rotor onto. Strange will be converted to old style bearing and hub style.
As already stated new manual booster and new hard lines and braided lines all need to be done.
The strange brakes are very light but they fade if you street them in a heavy car. My car is around 2500 and it was pretty good, but my daughters car is around 3k and they fade pretty quick after repeated stops on the street. I gave here my 12 bolt and I am going to attempt going to a 10 bolt with drums and spool. I'm pretty sure the drums are lighter than the strange brakes and the 10 bolt is too. I think it will survive in a light car though.
I've got all the parts ordered. I'm going to switch everything and will have the weight differences at one time. Parts on backorder like everything else.
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Drag brake setup to cut weight 
Just darn glad I called before ordering... I know a lot of folks will answer and have opinions on what I was told brakes are just something I am not interested in "testing" at 150mph.... So hopefully folks with real world experience with some combinations that are at the strip and running pretty quick times will chime in...
