I'm currently planning on running a C5 Brake conversion for my 1999 Firebird Trans-Am and I was wondering if the front brakes will bolt directly onto the rear brake brackets,

I personally doubt they will, but it would be nice if my doubts were put to rest.

 

You want to put your front F-body brakes on the back of your car?

I'm quite sure it won't be a bolt in project, the front brakes are quite a bit larger. Even if it would work, your brake bias would be WAY off. In fact, even with stock calipers, I've heard of auto-x people that don't use high performance pads in the back so the wheels don't lock up too quickly. The rear brakes don't really do the majority of the job anyways, so I don't think there'd be a significant benefit for all the work involved.

Anybody, please correct me if I'm wrong. Hope this helps!

 

I have c5 Z06 wheels on my trans am atm, and the front rotors are relatively new while the back rotors are extremely worn. Since I am getting new C5 Brakes on the front wheels, I'd like to be able to use my new front rotors on my back if it's possible.

Also, bigger brakes look nice especially which such large wheels.

Wheel sizes are 17x9.5 and 18x10.5

 

It's not really the issue of clearance, persay, it's an issue of completely throwing off your braking system and requiring new brackets/means of mounting the caliper to the rear and making it fit around the rotor.....basically, I'm saying it would be a big ordeal for something that would make your braking bias wayyyy off. Actually, if you have ABS I don't know what it would do to that....I would imagine the upgraded rear brakes (very nearly as good as the front C5 brakes) would cause your rear wheels to lock much quicker than the fronts. I think under semi-hard braking, you'd lock the rear wheels up, trigger ABS, and throw off your braking distances.

You can probably get rebuilt rear calipers for $40-50 at your local autoparts store....MUCH MUCH less than trying to get the fronts to fit.

 

Parking Brake.
Think about it, ...

 

you could always delete abs and run a proportioning valve

 

Touche, should have thought of that first, was too caught up in the idea.

Naw, ABS is important to me because I plan to keep my car streetable.

 

I'm not 100% sure on this, but I do know that on the new Camaros and Corvettes the back disc brakes are actually LARGER than the front My buddy told me this and I called bullshit and drove up to the dealership.....sure enough, backs are bigger.

 

Maybe it's for appearance reasons?

In anycase, I just bought myself a new set of rear rotors and pads, so it wouldn't be cost effective to do this mod anymore.

 

LT1 cars the rear rotors are bigger than the fronts. Rear rotors are 11.5" and the fronts are 11"

 

The rotor diameter size on the rear discs are larger than the fronts on these cars (by about .1"), but the brakes themselves up front are much more powerful as well as having larger calipers, not the problem with diameter.

Didn't even think about throwing parking brake into there.

EDIT: I reread this entire thread again.....I think I may have messed up! You wanted to put your front rotors in the back? From your first post, you said brakes, so I assumed you meant the caliper and all.

In that case the issue of the parking brake would have prevented it, and the smaller diameter rotor up front could have caused issues with not having the entire rear pad contacting the surface.

Sorry, the first post made it look like the whole braking setup being moved to the back, but reading comprehension failed me on your second post when you said "rotors"

 

This won't work for all of the above mentioned reasons. If you did make custom caliper brackets to get your stock front calipers/rotors to fit on the rear you would be upsetting the factory brake bias tremendously. Torque at the rotor is a function of line pressure, master cyl bore size and piston bore size, so leaving all else equal and putting a caliper with a monster piston on the rear is asking for rear end lock up. The drive train layout and center of gravity on our cars is such that not much rear bias is needed...you're best off just leaving the rears alone.