looking for an aftermarket front AND REAR brake system for fbody
#1
looking for an aftermarket front AND REAR brake system for fbody
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
#2
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.
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.
#4
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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.
#6
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?
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#9
Kleeborp the Moderator™
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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.
#10
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?
#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
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
#13
Kleeborp the Moderator™
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.
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.
#14
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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
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
#15
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
Last edited by Floorman279; 05-08-2012 at 09:41 PM. Reason: ..........
#16
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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?
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?
#18
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and here you go, it was trackbird
https://ls1tech.com/forums/suspensio...rs-my-t-2.html
https://ls1tech.com/forums/suspensio...rs-my-t-2.html
The C5 calipers use a smaller piston (actually 2 of them) and that reduces surface area which lowers clamping force (slightly). This was done to help the brake balance (front to rear) and keep the front brakes (with the larger rotors) from doing too much work. So, the F body calipers will shift the balance forward when you use them with 13" rotors (but the rear brakes on the LS1 cars are a little too helpful as it is, so that's not a bad thing). The total heat capacity is not any different between the two calipers and you'll still get the fade resistance of the larger rotors with either caliper. All you are actually doing (when changing calipers) is adjusting the ratio of work done by the front versus the rear brakes. The car will still stop with either caliper. However, with the F body calipers, the front brakes will do slightly more of the work and the rears will do slightly less, with the corvette calipers, the fronts will do slightly less work (than with the F-body calipers) and the rears will do slightly more. Technically, the Corvette caliper was designed to work with the larger rotor as a package, the problem is, it wasn't designed for this car. So, I'm not going to say that one is better than the other, just that they are different.
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