turtlevette

I put Wilwood Dynalites on the front a couple of months ago. Just went to my first track event of the year at New Hampshire International and i'm impressed by the Wilwoods.

There are a couple of good hard braking zones there and i didn't lose pedal height like i did with the stock calipers. Didn't have any problem with pedal fade due to gassing either.

I'm gonna put the dynalites on the back too now that the front worked out well.

When i broke off a bleeder screw in the stock front caliper last winter i decided to quit buying any more stock calipers and try something different. The dynalites are about the same cost as a stock caliper anyway so i thought what do i have to lose. They have better sealing technology than the stockers eliminating air pumping. Stainless cupped pistons reduce heat transfer to the fluid and the aluminum body dissipates heat quicker.

Twin_Turbo

why would you swap out the stock calipers? Aren't they the be all end all in caliper design and performance? I keep hearing that here all the time (suit on)

BB68Vett

Twin Turbo, do I sense a tad bit of sarcasm? I agree with you by the way.

turtlevette, are there special caliper brackets required for the Dynalites?

gkull

I've wondered about the smaller Wilwood calipers. I thought that with less piston area and smaller pads that the brakes would be less effective.

Twin_Turbo

pad size does not influence clamping force, it only has an effect of heat distribution and therefore on fading.

turtlevette

the aluminum front brackets i got from a guy who bought them from 427V8. 427V8 makes a different bracket now for the superlites from steel. Heidt's hot rod shop makes the rear dynalite adapter brackets.

turtlevette

i didn't have a problem. The superlites actually have about the same piston area. The superlites do have different piston sizes fore and aft to eliminate pad taper.

norvalwilhelm

I still fail to see what is wrong with stock calipers. I bought 3 from one suppier and they have never given me a moments trouble. The 4th was from a supplier I didn't know and I was forced to put in O ring's for VBP to fix an intermitent problem with it.
As for our brakes other then weight?? what is wrong with our almost 48 mm front 4 piston calipers???
If properly set up our systems are not a problem and I refuse to have anything but a proper setup??
Marck I could buy Force10 calipers at a cost of over $1000CDN for a front set and save what 5 pounds per caliper?? and end up with a 43 mm piston??
For the guy like me that maintains his equipment well within factory specs other then spending alot of money for weight reduction and it runs about $100 per pound what is the big problem with our stock calipers???
I took 50 pounds out in holes in the front end. At that cost I would be looking at $5000 just for that weight reduction.
No I am happy with the stock calipers.
At the corvette show on Saturday a guy had Bear 14 inch rotors and compared to mine I covered alot more surface area then he did with my stock calipers.
I know you said it doesn't matter about pad area.
I looked at 6 piston calipers and the pad alone cost for the front were more costly then my 4 stainless calipers.
I throw money away as quick as the next guy but I will not use a shovel to throw it out even faster

turtlevette

Norval,

Unless you have driven on a road course you will probably not expose the shortcomings of the stock calipers. If you are satisfied with the stockers for street use that's fine with me.

But, how can you say the stock calipers should work for me when i tell you they don't.

The last straw was when i broke a bleeder off on one of those cast iron pigs and was about to go get a rebuilt one when i said to myself.....wait a minute why pay 100 bucks to get the same old crap when i can try a modern racing caliper for the same amount of money.

The pistons fit tightly in the bore not a sloppy wiggly fit. The bleeders have screw in brass seats. They weigh 2.5 pounds and look like a something that should be on a race car, not just a huge glob of iron.. They are aluminum and dissipate heat better. They have stainless steel cupped pistons to reduce heat transfer to the fluid. A set of stainless pistons alone for our calipers run 200 bucks. You can get pads in a huge variety of compounds. The front piston size is a little smaller than stock which takes some of the dive out when braking. That's a good thing. Racers want to let the rear do as much braking as possible just short of locking first. You know that frist hand as you removed the prop valve.

Wilwoods are a GOOD thing.

P.S.

I know a guy who roadraces door to door and he says he has to rebuild the stock calipers every race because the wimpy lip seals melt and lose their tension in the bore.

norvalwilhelm

Your right Turtlevette. For you they were not the best. I was just responding to Twin Turbo's sacasm.
Properly maintained our brakes with the aid of hydroboost are a good system, again other then weight.

gkull

You never mention how your track day was.

Years ago when I was looking at Wilwood and other brakes. The Wilwood web sight was different and they had calipers listed in the order of stopping power and information on weight of car and usage. The smaller 2.5 pound Dynalites were recommended for sub 2500 pound street rods. It wasn't until you got up to the 4-5.5 pound calipers where they were rated for full size cars front brakes. When 427V8 was selling the kit adapters I brought this up that the better solution was to market adapters for the larger calipers really designed for our cars.

Turtle Vette is right about the stock calipers getting destroyed by heat. If I went out and blued the rotors, within a short period of time I would notice leaking pistons. About 1.5 years ago (knock on wood) I bought these SDuty Stainless Steel O-ring calipers that have a lifetime Guarantee. I’ve gone out and been as hard on them as ever and they aren’t leaking yet

stingraymaniac

Turtle where did you buy the wilwoods??
this is a thing on my to do list...

427V8

Turtle,
I'm very happy you like the Dynalites! I think you should save your pennies and put Superlite 4's on the front and move the Dyna's to the back. The SL4's are solid suckers!


Brakes are like engines. You don't NEED a blown Big block. The stock engine works just fine (Norval) So why would ANYONE ever want to upgrade? My stock 350/300 was more than enough to break every speed limit in the USA and would go faster that I wanted to.

</scarcasm>

The dynalites are a pretty good caliper. The pad area is a little small but that only means you will be going through pads faster nothing else.

I have stopped selling brackets for the Dynalites only because they require complex double sided CNC machining.
I can make brackets for 3.5" mount brackets a LOT cheaper and
easier. And since I sell about 2 sets a year cost is important!

Also they fit a wide variety of calipers from different manufacturers.

I now recommend Superlite 4's in front and Dynalites in back. It gives an awesome brake system for a really cheap price. I talking like $700 or so for front and rear for a system that would be 2x that for anything else, just go look at brake upgrade kits, $1500 - $2000 is very common.

gkull

I would like a kit with this caliper!

http://www.stockcarproducts.com/brakes3.htm

Twin_Turbo

G,

THe GNIII us a GT mount caliper, as in it has a 5,25" spacing. They are nice calipers but i fear you'll have to come up with your own brackets, maybe precisionbrakes can do it, they do offer a wilwood kit for C3 vettes. My calipers are 5,25 GT mount also. Another thing is, you need some deep wheels to clear those calipers but your 17" wheels should do it.
I guess my little sarcasm hit an active spot Everyone's gotta do what he feels is best, so if someone wants to run stock calipers so be it...that's not what my comment was about, it's about the false statement that C3 calipers are good calipers...and that statement frequents here a lot.

I have tried to explain what's wrong with them a lot of times, if you set up your brakes properly and do some hard driving on windy roads you'll end up at home w/ a set of brakes that work at maybe 75% of the capacity that you left with, they do pump air even if everything checks out fine, high loads on the bearings and things start to act up real quickly.

Why would you buy the overpriced Force 10 calipers if similar, if not better stuff is available for less money?

I was never a fan of baer calipers, theya re revamped PBR and alcon saddles,..they probably have updated their product lines by now but I haven't checked w/ them in a long time. Simply put, compared to some high end calipers like AP and Brembo the baer calipers are a sad excuse gor high end brakes, if you want to see what are proper brakes go look what hillclimbers and track day racers use in the UK, you will not see a baer caliper there.

CrossedFlags77

Tell us more about your track day.

I am getting a set of front rotors and calipers from 2000 Camaro SS for free very soon. I highly doubt they will fit with 15'' wheels so it looks like that project will be postponed for a while.

redvetracr

Alcon`s and Brembo`s are BETTER!! much better and more expensive MUCH more.
...redvetracr

427V8

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

turtlevette

I run with COMSCC exclusively because they are a great group of guys that don't nit pick your car. They make you feel very welcome and not a lot of egos to deal with.

We ran NHIS in a chicane/chicane configuration.



there are hard braking zones prior to corners 1,3,6 and 9 and i over braked many times to try and get the dynalites to fade. I was also concerned that the caliper could be too small to do the job, but i didn't lose any pedal nor did braking effort increase over the 20 minute run. I'm going to keep the dynalites on front. I am cheap so the whole idea is to replace the caliper with something that was compareable to the cost of a replacement stock caliper that will fit under stock wheels.

I still only have 8 - 10 hours of track time under my belt so i need a lot more seat time to be smooth and consistant. I am licensed and run with much more experienced guys. The first half day i was running with "large bore" high hp cars some highly modified. It was pretty intimidating. At lunch i asked to be put in a slower run group so they put me with the small bore cars such as the miata. They all blew by me too. I could try and catch them on the straights, but thats not the point of the road course. You want to learn how to master the corners. My suspension bottomed out pretty good in turn 3 which i thought was one of the more difficult turns. I lost the car in turn 1 becuse i failed to brake enough but was real pleased that i brought the car from a semi sidewase slide to straight, completely recovering.

Corner 2b is a lot of fun because you can play in the high bank of the main circletrack. You just hammer it and feather it out and the car just sticks. Turn 12 was pretty cool. They had a radar gun showing your speed. Most of the better guys were running 65/70 i was running 55/60 but you keep the hammer down at the exit and feather out towards the concrete wall on the main circletrack if you have the gonads, keep the hammer down and wait as long as you dare to brake before turn 1 and hope you get it all done before you have to turn the car. Yep its exciting!

As Norval says we are kidding ourselves if we think these cars are quick. They cannot keep up with modern technology, but its a ton of fun to try with no active handling or ABS fighting a very unforgiving car. It takes much more skill than i will ever muster to be competitive in this car. The trick is just to leave your ego at home and just do the best YOU can do and have fun. My hat off to redvetracr, gkull, clutchdust, Gdiana and others who go out and kick some butt with the C3.

Running a car on a road course is the most fun thing i have ever done including sex. I can get sex anytime but only limited opportunity to get adrenaline at the track.

I want to reiterate what i'm doing is NOT racing. Its merely practice where you give the faster cars "point by" telling them you see them giving them permission to pass and which side to pass you on.

GDaina

Turtle, you may be right, you may be wrong, as Billy Joel would say....

I competed on the twisties during the early to mid 70's...stock brakes worked fine, no brake fade. The tracks I ran, Nelsons Ledges, some short oval tracks in Columbus, Ohio, ran Mid Ohio, and Watkins Glenn...the events were NCCC type events, time trials, one lap, per round, 3-4 rounds, depending how the sponsor club set up the events.

Granted, no 20-30 continuous laps in these events, also, no wheel to wheel racing, just one car on the track, most three cars at a time, depending how the clubs spaced the cars on the track.

Based what on the racing that I did, I would take the Wildwoods, if given to me free, but I wouldn't spend a dollar on them...