I'm building my chevette for road racing/autoX and one of the biggest obsticles is the brakes. I was thinking of getting a chevette brake booster, corvette master cylinder, fiero calipers, braided steel lines and eBay driled and slotted rotors. I'm going to use a camaro rear end so I'll have disc in the back. One problem is that I can't find vented rotors for my car. Is there a way I can get rotors and take them to a machine shop and have them vented? I don't want to go 5 lug. Could I possibly use honda rotors or wouls it be to much work to be worth it? Any ideas would be great.
idea number one: dig out your June 2008 GRM and study the article "Think Globally, Stop Locally: A systems approach to brake component upgrades". It's got all the math you need to select components that will give you a balanced system.
actually fitting those components to your car, well, that'll be up to you.
I have no idea why you're suggesting the components you listed. Do you?
When you're ready to look for rotors, check out brembo's online catalog, which allows you to search by critical parameters like hub diameter, wheel lug pattern, outside diameter, thickness, etc.
brembo's online catalog
I'll have to try to get a back issue
I plug that article whenever I can, because I wrote it. if you want something along a similar vein but with a little more depth in each area, pick up James Walker Jr's excellent "High Performance Brake Systems: Design, Selection, and Installation" published by S-A Design and available through amazon.com and others. It's a rock-solid work that is easy to read and understand.
Once you've done a little reading and can provide some more detail on the project car -- corner weights, expected top speed, wheel and tire sizes, etc -- I'll be happy to walk through some calculations with you. If we keep it on this board, maybe some other folks will learn something too.
mrdontplay wrote:
Is there a way I can get rotors and take them to a machine shop and have them vented?
Doubtful. Vented rotors are cast with the radial channels in them.
But like AngryCorvair said...design your system based on facts, not what sounds good in the catalogue.
Clem
the brembo site will be very helpful in selecting rotors. example: on my '61 corvair wagon four wheel disc brake conversion, i searched for rotors by bolt pattern (determined by OE hubs) and outside diameter (determined by my system sizing calculations), and i found several options. so i pulled up some of their dimensioned sketches and got offset, pilot hole, total thickness, vent width, etc, and found that the front rotors from a '98 nissan altima would be almost perfect for my application, when used with the aluminum four-piston calipers from the late-80's RX7 turbo. YMMV and will almost certainly be less.
note: these are brakes. they are significantly more important to your health and well being than, say, your radio. read and learn all you can, but as Dave Ramsey says about investing, "don't buy anything you don't understand."
AngryCorvair said:
but as Dave Ramsey says about investing, "don't buy anything you don't understand."
I wish I had followed those directions when I bought a TR-7 at 17.....lol
chevette have good fronts factory.
use 80 and up calipers as they have bigger bores.
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Oh just incase you have to get better brakes
Dave @ Hawk Machine has adapter brackets for the chevette spindle to willwood dyna calipers
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http://www.hawkmachine.com/caliperbrackets.htm
