fidelity101
fidelity101 UltraDork
8/29/19 10:43 a.m.

I've searched and now I'm hunting rock auto. I am working on a "simple" brake swap but of course its becoming more complex like any good project. 

I need to move the brake rotor outboard in car 5.5mm to clear the calipers without having to modify the calipers at all (ideal condition) So a way to solve this would be potentially no brake rotor spacer but find a different brake rotor that would fit and potentially eliminate the need for a spacer because the hat offset might make everything fit perfectly. Brembo has a catalog but its not available in our country? (WTF MURICA?!) 

 

so outside of making custom brake rotors (sounds expensive) I call upon the hive of knowledge for acceptable 5x114.3 pattern brake rotors that have a hub bore of ~66mm 

 

otherwise I am scowering rockauto for various vehicles comparing sizes which has been not fun. 

So ideally I need a shallower offset by 5.5mm instead of 19.9mm I  would need 14.4mm because that would bring the brake rotor more outboard in vehicle and then clear the caliper mounting features  47.5mm overall height (1.87")

 

otherwise I am making a 5.5mm spacer for the existing rotor and then having to turn the ID of the rotor to accommodate a spacer that would allow the loads to ride the collars they are intended. 

 

does this make sense? or am I talking crazy? Who has access to brake rotor sizes numerically? 

 

oh, this is what I'm working on:

I spent sometime to inspect/clean and properly toque/threadlock the rear brake parts. The initial Idea of having the rear brakes upgraded before the next event is likely not going to happen but I do have some spares so a quick mockup of whats to come. 

ditch the integral parking brake garbage, go from sliding to fixed piston style, eliminate moving parts, go from iron to aluminum components, the hydraulics are already setup for AN fittings so adapting is easy, not to mention the brake adjust valve at the handbrake so this should be a pretty great upgrade! These reman rx7 calipers are getting worse and worse and I have gone through many a rear set through the ownership of this car come to think of it. 

300zx rear rotors are 11.7" diameter a touch larger and do not fit on the rx7 rear suspension, factory vented rx7 rear brakes are 10.7" diameter, the overall thickness between the 2 rotors is 2mm and these calipers seem to be more readily available and similarly priced, sometimes even cheaper. 

Some people put rx7 front brakes on the rear and run four 4-pot calipers but that seemed like overkill, ive searched other brake swap upgrades and nothing really works back there, some FD upgrades but you still have a similar caliper style as the FC so its not a big difference. STI/Evo brembos are impossible to find and 3 times the cost per caliper nearly. CTS V stuff is all 4+ piston ginormous and a lot off off the shelf solutions for 2 piston via willwood or brembo were either too large/small or even more expensive...

So now I have gone down this brake upgrade path and potentially can make kits in the future with the DMLS 3d printer for others so this may be a slow roll...

People have used these calipers on FC where they put it parallel to the existing caliper and use a standalone e-brake but I think that bracket setup isn't going to be robust enough for rally. 

 

(stolen from the internet)

 

this bracket does fix a key issue though, placing the z32 caliper offset a touch rearward as the offset of the rotor to rotor hat are different between the two, so to center the brake caliper pads on the rotor you have to raise the entire hub surface by 5.5mm, so a spacer needs to be made to accommodate the hub bore of the wheel and the hub bore of the rotor. 

Luckily 1 factory brake caliper attachment point bolts up and works out pretty okay!

 

see? not too shabby!

Keith Tanner
Keith Tanner GRM+ Memberand MegaDork
8/29/19 11:26 a.m.
wspohn
wspohn Dork
8/29/19 12:38 p.m.

And maybe try Wilwood too.

Keith Tanner
Keith Tanner GRM+ Memberand MegaDork
8/29/19 12:57 p.m.
Keith Tanner said:

Brembo lets you search by dimension:

https://www.bremboparts.com/europe/en/products/discs/product-range

I see now this was mentioned in the original post. Just put some numbers in, it will pop out results along with the warning of "not available in your country". It does seem to be based on a European data set, but there are a lot of cars that are sold in both markets. IIRC we used it to find a specific rotor for one of our kits.

fidelity101
fidelity101 UltraDork
8/29/19 3:19 p.m.

yeah this is good for looking for cars individually and searching make by make, model by model off of known 5x4.5 cars. I was hoping for an easier way but it seems look up each car and manually review the dimensions, like I was doing on rockauto. 

The wilwood one is nice but it looks like they only have parking brake drum in hat type systems or they are separate hub/rotor like GT race cars which is outside the need or warrant for this car. 

Kind of want to give up on these and just re-sell the calipers because this is turning into a huge E36 M3 show and a slippery slope of way too berkeleying expensive for my needs, but if it prevents me from a DNF weekend its worth it?
 

berkeley me I hate racing - I wish I had a cheap hobby like knitting but good god is it fun!!!!

Keith Tanner
Keith Tanner GRM+ Memberand MegaDork
8/29/19 3:33 p.m.

No, you can enter dimensions directly and it will tell you what matches. 

fidelity101
fidelity101 UltraDork
8/29/19 3:46 p.m.

In reply to Keith Tanner :

ahh I found that and tried but still:

"The application is not available for your country. For any further information, please contact us"

Keith Tanner
Keith Tanner GRM+ Memberand MegaDork
8/29/19 3:50 p.m.

Ignore that and enter some dimensions. If there's a match, it will show them. Try something really obvious like rotor thickness of 25mm and minimum of 21.

fidelity101
fidelity101 UltraDork
8/29/19 3:54 p.m.

yup thats working, the I3 BMW is close if it wasnt 5x112 and its only 3mm off of the total height and offset would be fine! 

 

time to keep the number game going and searching around. 

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