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Spicshaft
Spicshaft New Reader
3/4/24 4:39 p.m.

Hey everyone, I've got some questions that hopefully somebody can answer. I am not a car genius, I know that I have more knowledge than the average person but I'm not a mechanic or anything of the sort. Not even close. I am a person that likes the idea of getting something for very little, in this case I'm talking about junkyard brake caliper upgrades.

Natural, I'm thinking about this for a couple of cars in mind.. one of them already has a semi-junkyard upgrade but I'd like to see something better, especially if it was not a huge deal and aluminum to boot. The other one, I haven't found anything.

I think I know what needs to be considered, but I want to run things past people and of course have people chime in and throw me there one or two bits because I want to learn. There is the height of the rotor, if and you wrote her has to be used. There is the spacing between the caliper holes as well as the offset of the caliper compared to the one that would be replacing.

The one upgrade I'm thinking of now uses a different rotor that is bigger and needs to be drilled for a different bolt pattern, and the caliper needs spacers to fit.

Is there a resource or some easy way I can try to find caliber information like the whole distance and so-called offset?

Is there anything else people should be thinking about or considering when trying to do a junkyard upgrade? I'm not even thinking about brake master cylinders at this point, just everything at the wheel for now. I hope I didn't sound too ridiculous, and thank you everyone in advance.

Keith Tanner
Keith Tanner MegaDork
3/4/24 4:56 p.m.

Brembo has dimensioned rotor drawings in their catalog. That will include the offset and the overall diameter. It won't tell you exactly what the caliper bracket looks like, but it might tell you a few things.

For example (taken from here and here), here you can see the caliper centerline is 30mm inboard of the mounting plane of the rotor (45-6-(18/2)). That's enough to let you start looking for larger diameter rotors that share the same offset.

Here's another rotor, could it be used?  

The second one has the center of the caliper 28mm inboard (45-7-(22/2)). That's pretty close, we may be able to make that work and get a rotor that's nearly 1.5" larger in diameter and with more cooling fins. More importantly, it's a wider rotor so we have to make sure our caliper can handle it. But that's good information. Taken the other way, it tells us that the caliper for the second rotor can handle a 4mm wider rotor and what its bracket might look like. Given that both of the cars involved use the same upright design (something I happen to know), it tells us a lot about the relative caliper brackets.

What it doesn't tell us is piston size. Don't forget to take your caliper piston area into account. That's a factor that goes along with master cylinder area, so if you're not going to change the MC you want your piston area to remain pretty much the same.

ShawnG
ShawnG MegaDork
3/4/24 5:05 p.m.

You might be able to find a caliper that bolts up the same but has larger pistons. Rockauto can be handy for dimensions.

Example: The brakes on my wife's 2500 Suburban suck.

Turns out the 3500 truck calipers look the same but have larger pistons. Same for the 3500 rotors. Same diameter but thicker so more mass = more heat sink.

Made a big difference and easy to get.

L5wolvesf
L5wolvesf Dork
3/4/24 5:50 p.m.

Are you looking to find bigger brakes from the same manufacturer and / or model?

Spicshaft
Spicshaft New Reader
3/5/24 3:25 a.m.
L5wolvesf said:

Are you looking to find bigger brakes from the same manufacturer and / or model?

Hey there, thanks for the reply. No, I don't care what manufacturer they come from. The current upgrade is a Saab rotor with Saab Saturn calipers. The rotor has to be drilled and there needs to be a spacer for the caliper. That's it. It's much better than stock on car one, car two I haven't found any info or looked anything up yet.

Spicshaft
Spicshaft New Reader
3/5/24 3:27 a.m.
Keith Tanner said:

Brembo has dimensioned rotor drawings in their catalog. That will include the offset and the overall diameter. It won't tell you exactly what the caliper bracket looks like, but it might tell you a few things.

For example (taken from here and here), here you can see the caliper centerline is 30mm inboard of the mounting plane of the rotor (45-6-(18/2)). That's enough to let you start looking for larger diameter rotors that share the same offset.

Here's another rotor, could it be used?  

The second one has the center of the caliper 28mm inboard (45-7-(22/2)). That's pretty close, we may be able to make that work and get a rotor that's nearly 1.5" larger in diameter and with more cooling fins. More importantly, it's a wider rotor so we have to make sure our caliper can handle it. But that's good information. Taken the other way, it tells us that the caliper for the second rotor can handle a 4mm wider rotor and what its bracket might look like. Given that both of the cars involved use the same upright design (something I happen to know), it tells us a lot about the relative caliper brackets.

What it doesn't tell us is piston size. Don't forget to take your caliper piston area into account. That's a factor that goes along with master cylinder area, so if you're not going to change the MC you want your piston area to remain pretty much the same.

Thank you so much for the info. They currently is a rotor and caliper upgrade but I'm hoping to find a better one. The rotor is a Saab as is the caliper, which is also found on a saturn. I don't mind the idea of changing the master cylinder but I'd like to find a caliper that would be better than the current upgrade first, if you know what I mean. I haven't even thought about the second car. I do appreciate your input big time.

Spicshaft
Spicshaft New Reader
3/5/24 3:28 a.m.
ShawnG said:

You might be able to find a caliper that bolts up the same but has larger pistons. Rockauto can be handy for dimensions.

Example: The brakes on my wife's 2500 Suburban suck.

Turns out the 3500 truck calipers look the same but have larger pistons. Same for the 3500 rotors. Same diameter but thicker so more mass = more heat sink.

Made a big difference and easy to get.

Hey thanks for the reply. I didn't even know that RockAuto gave Dimensions between the mounting holes. I need to have a look. I do wish people would get information in a database with basic specs for calipers. I'm going to guess it would help a lot of people.

bobzilla
bobzilla MegaDork
3/5/24 8:50 a.m.

What cars? I can't imagine that there isn't a combo someone here hasn't seen. Like I know all the Korean upgrades almost by heart. 

wvumtnbkr
wvumtnbkr PowerDork
3/5/24 9:02 a.m.

I also want to know what car.  I'd also like to know what the issue is that we are trying to solve.

Bigger brakes aren't necessarily better.

earlybroncoguy1
earlybroncoguy1 Reader
3/5/24 9:45 p.m.

Not sure how much it'll help with your particular application, but I can tell you Porsche/Brembo Boxster calipers have a 130mm mounting bolt spacing (radial).

And that 911SC vented front rotors are the perfect width for them, bolt right up to '66 912 stock front hubs, and are a nice upgrade over the stock, thin, solid rotors.

And 944 (non-Turbo) vented rear rotors slip right over '66 912 stock rear hubs, are a nice upgrade over the stock, thin, solid rotors, and even work with the stock 912 drum-in-hat parking brakes.   

bobzilla
bobzilla MegaDork
3/6/24 11:54 a.m.
wvumtnbkr said:

I also want to know what car.  I'd also like to know what the issue is that we are trying to solve.

Bigger brakes aren't necessarily better.

You get out of here with that negativity. Biggerer is always betterer. 

wvumtnbkr
wvumtnbkr PowerDork
3/6/24 12:07 p.m.

In reply to bobzilla :

Lolz.  Thanks for that!

Stubbs
Stubbs New Reader
3/6/24 1:57 p.m.

I designed a junkyard brake upgrade for my RX8 using FK8 Civic Type R Calipers and 07-14 Mustang GT 355x32 rotors in the front and Mustang GT500 350x19 rotors with the stock caliper in the rear.

Most of the resources I used have already been mentioned, but to reiterate.

I used the Brembo catalog to narrow down the Rotors that would fit.  The search tool is a little wonkey, but if you play around with it you'll be able to narrow down what off the shelf rotors will work best for your goal.  The dimensional drawing are extremely helpful when designing in CAD.

Rock Auto's Catalog is also an extremely useful tool.  While not every part has the key dimensions listed there's a lot of data centralized in one spot, but you need to have an idea of what make, model, year will have what you are looking for.

Centric tends to have good dimensions listed for their parts.  Search their web catalog, usually the same data will be the rock auto listing, but sometimes there's a bit more on Centric's catalog

The GrabCad library has some useful stuff in it if you're making anything in CAD. I found a few models of calipers on there, as well as some rotor and hub models.  

Google searches can dredge up useful forum posts with dimension, but be prepared to get creative in how you search.  I spent hours digging through various sites and found some good nuggets of information, but be careful as occasionally the information posted is plain wrong or may send you down the wrong path. 

 

If you strike out on all of the above you can get measurements off images.  It's not going to be exact, and requires a bit of effort and luck, but it might help narrow things down.

Look for images of the part in question.  Try to find an image that has the part oriented so that the dimension you want to measure is centered and as flat as possible to the plane of the camera.  There will need to be a reference point/object that you know the dimension of in the frame.  A bolt head can work or another dimension of the part you already know; references with sharp defined edges are the best.  Try to use medium size reference objects as measuring error will tend to increase with small objects.   It'll need to be close to the same plane as what you are trying to measure.  

The manual way of doing it is to print a copy of the image and measure the reference point/object in the image with a ruler or caliper and divide your known reference value by the value you measured on the image.  This will give you the scale ratio of the image.  Measure the dimension you want to know and multiply it by the scale ratio to get the actual dimension.

There is software you can use to do it digitally.  I've used Adobe Acrobat to do it before, but there are many free open source programs available better suited for it.  If you have Fusion360 you can import the image as a canvas, scale it and get the measurements and/or use it as a template for a sketch.

 

I measured out the RX8 knuckle, hub and brakes and used that as a basis to build my adapter brackets in Fusion360.  I built models of a few different rotors based on the drawings from Brembo's catalog, and imported a couple potential caliper models to see how they fit my design. 

Once I selected the caliper and rotor I was going to use I 3D printed the adapter brackets for mock-up to make sure I had the clearances I needed on the car.  The final design was cut out of steel by SendCutSend and it bolted on with no issues.

Spicshaft
Spicshaft New Reader
3/7/24 2:18 p.m.

Wow people in this forum rock. I really appreciate the info so far. I've asked for specific measurements for calipers in other groups specific to certain cars, do you think I get answers? Hell no. Mind you the same thing happened in a Toyota group. People often tell you everything you don't want to know or don't need to know instead of answering the one question you asked.

One car looking at at the moment is a lotus m100. The factory brakes are literally criminal. We're talking terrible. Someone figured out how to do a front upgrade by using 293 mm Subaru Legacy rotors drilled to 4x100 and using the Saab front calipers from the first generation 93. The only thing needed to make it all work are a set of 15 mm spacers and longer bolts. It makes a massive difference in stopping but a little bit more would be nicer especially since they're heavy. I would love to find a caliper that is one or more of the following aluminum, dual piston, larger pad surface. I'm happy to keep the Legacy rotor since it's already been found and works and will be around. It's also a hell of a lot easier to find than the original rotor even though that original rotor is still available!

The other vehicle I'm going to be looking at but haven't done anything really other than ask people questions if they knew upgrades for the front, are for the first gen Pontiac Vibe AKA Toyota. I hate the fact that I love this car so much but for something that can move a lot of stuff around and how it offers a decent drive for what it is, and the fact that I think I could pour gas all over it, light it on fire, wait for it to burn out and it'll still drive perfectly is endearing.

Once again, thanks everyone, it's really nice to hear feedback, unlike the other kind of feedback I've been getting from people who seriously answer two plus two equals ice cream.

Stampie
Stampie MegaDork
3/7/24 3:04 p.m.
Spicshaft said:

People often tell you everything you don't want to know or don't need to know instead of answering the one question you asked.

Oh we do that too.  We just wait to get to know you better first.

Spicshaft
Spicshaft New Reader
3/7/24 3:17 p.m.
Stampie said:
Spicshaft said:

People often tell you everything you don't want to know or don't need to know instead of answering the one question you asked.

Oh we do that too.  We just wait to get to know you better first.

That's nice to know. Everywhere else, you get that right away! Then there's the guy in the Toyota far more asked questions and he started telling me it sounded like I didn't know what was going on, suggested that I pay him to do some research.. the kind that millions of people offer information for free. Then he made a misogynistic comment and a few other insults which is weird in itself.. so I made it very clear that I wasn't taking his garbage. Then I start getting tons of replies from people saying that's just him having character, him being funny, him being whatever.. but he provides a lot of information. Holy crap. I wish that happened in public because I would have burned him on the spot. At least know me before giving me crap and supplying irrelevant information!

ShawnG
ShawnG MegaDork
3/7/24 3:44 p.m.

Welcome to the best automotive forum on the planet.

Thanks for all the compliments. We all like it here.

Some of us get into heated discussions about things but generally it all stays pretty civil. 

No matter how weird the thing you're building is, we will probably think it's cool and want you to succeed. There's not much we can't all figure out when all of the forum is pondering something.

Spicshaft
Spicshaft New Reader
3/7/24 8:46 p.m.

In reply to ShawnG :

I hope I can get some help on this one for sure. I've been scarring RockAuto but I can't even find many lighter vehicles that had aluminum calipers in the first place, at least not cars that were really having comparison. I'm thinking oversized calipers would be a bad idea.

ShawnG
ShawnG MegaDork
3/7/24 10:00 p.m.

For aluminum calipers, the easy button is probably Wilwood calipers and an adapter plate.

procainestart
procainestart SuperDork
3/7/24 10:40 p.m.

There's a big brake kit for Saabs, with 4-piston Brembos. An internet stranger says, they're the same as what's on the Chevy Cobalt SS:

https://www.saablink.net/threads/big-brembos-tiny-budget.55300/

If you can't find rotors with the bolt pattern you need, note that the old Saab 9-3 pattern and offset should be the same as the 9-5 -- the Viggen version of the 9-3 and the 9-5 had the same brakes -- so you may be able to find bigger rotors.

I know nothing about any of this, so you'll need to do your homework.

Spicshaft
Spicshaft New Reader
3/8/24 2:47 a.m.
ShawnG said:

For aluminum calipers, the easy button is probably Wilwood calipers and an adapter plate.

As mentioned, I'm trying to do the junkyard upgrade instead of going for something ultra niche. Thanks.

Spicshaft
Spicshaft New Reader
3/8/24 2:55 a.m.
procainestart said:

There's a big brake kit for Saabs, with 4-piston Brembos. An internet stranger says, they're the same as what's on the Chevy Cobalt SS:

https://www.saablink.net/threads/big-brembos-tiny-budget.55300/

If you can't find rotors with the bolt pattern you need, note that the old Saab 9-3 pattern and offset should be the same as the 9-5 -- the Viggen version of the 9-3 and the 9-5 had the same brakes -- so you may be able to find bigger rotors.

I know nothing about any of this, so you'll need to do your homework.

Thanks for the thought. We already have a bigger rotor, from the Subaru legacy. The details are a couple of posts above. The junkyard caliper upgrade is the Saab 9-3 and 95 as well as the Saturn caliper. I'd like to find a caliper with one or more of the things I listed, of course preferably all of them. I don't want to go beyond two Pistons because that would be overkill. They won't fit in a 16 in wheel for sure, and it would be too much. I was hoping someone would have a thought for a smaller car with aluminum calipers with one or two Pistons. Or maybe something else that popped into someone's mind. I just want to see what people might come up with. I'm even thinking even STI calipers would be major overkill even if they could be made to fit

Curtis73 (Forum Supporter)
Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) MegaDork
3/8/24 9:45 a.m.

There aren't many around anymore, but 20 years ago, parts stores still used parts catalogs.  They were these huge racks of binders about 3 feet wide.  Those parts catalogs helped me greatly.  They list every spec.  It's old-school and tedious, but if you can find a mom-n-pop store that still has some, ask for their last-year's catalogs.

I used that to help me find brake upgrades by comparing master cylinder and wheel caliper volumes and surface areas, offsets of rotors, etc.  It's analog, but I found it to be kinda zen.

I was able to put 3/4 ton 8 lug brakes on a 66 Bonneville that way, and was able to choose the right master, booster, and calipers to make it work.  I also discovered that Dodge Dakota shocks were a good match for the rear which had been upgraded to a 10.5" floater.

wvumtnbkr
wvumtnbkr PowerDork
3/8/24 10:13 a.m.

1991 Nissan 300zx calipers are under $100, 4 piston, aluminum, and fit under a 16 inch wheel at least.

I know 2nd gen rx7 calipers are 4 piston, aluminum, and fit under 15 inch wheels, but they are hard to find.

 

Edit to add:  willwood probably ARE the answer here.  They are cheap and have YUGE support.

 

Keith Tanner
Keith Tanner MegaDork
3/8/24 10:36 a.m.
Spicshaft said:
ShawnG said:

For aluminum calipers, the easy button is probably Wilwood calipers and an adapter plate.

As mentioned, I'm trying to do the junkyard upgrade instead of going for something ultra niche. Thanks.

Thing is that Wilwood calipers aren't really niche. You won't find them in junkyards, but you do find used ones being sold by racers which is kinda the same thing. As a bonus, you can get every possible brake pad compound for them and they come in whatever combo of pad size and piston area you might want.

Adapter plates can sometimes be made out of plate steel. They're not necessarily difficult. I fitted a set of Wilwood calipers to a VW Vanagon using a grinder, belt sander and a welder. 
https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/build-projects-and-project-cars/make-the-bus-stop-custom-vanagon-brakes/159030/page1/

Then I did a second version. 
https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/build-projects-and-project-cars/making-the-bus-stop-part-2/173971/page1/

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