Hot Rod Brakes

I'm building a 32 ford Three window coupe(GRM style) and am trying to make up my mind on a brake combo. This car is glass with a Shadow rods chassis. I plan on powder coating the chassis and suspention parts. Low maintence year round drive ability. I also plan on putting LOTS of miles on this car.The question is do I put on an aftermarket high end brakes ( Willwood, Brembo) or do I put brakes on that have parts availabe at any NAPA store. I want to stop as good as I can but it may be difficult to make a repair on a road trip with the high end brakes. What would GRM do?

Definitely go with parts store available brakes, just a pick a much heavier or high performance car for the donor.

I like the discs that tuck in behind fake Buick finned drums.

Depending on the aftermarket caliper, it might be feasible to carry a spare and matching pads. The Wilwood Dynalite 4-piston calipers come to mind. Plus the mail order houses could could overnight the parts to pretty much anywhere.

The production vehicle based caliper is pretty tempting, as long as you grab something pretty widely used. Your coupe would be pretty light, and there are some OE aluminum calipers out there too. Depending on the look of your car, a cast iron caliper might stick out like a sore thumb, but a finned aluminum later model Corvette caliper could look right at home.

Have you figured out what rotors you'll be using, and what (if any) emergency/parking brake setup?

The traditional thing would be to use mid 1950s F-100 pickup drum brakes, and considering a fiberglass '32 is pretty light they should work well.

Mustang II components seem to be prevalent in rods as far as discs go.

If it's not going on the track then +1 for the commonly available brakes. Don't forget, big brakes carry a lot of downsides in return for better heat capacity and more braking force (which is rarely a shortcoming that needs to be addressed).

When I was working on the Dirty 911, I found that it shared pads with almost every Mercedes from the 70's and 80's. They were in stock at Advance Auto for less than twenty bucks and they looked to be very OEM Brembo-ish.

Most "racing calpiers" don't deal with grime or wet well they don't have the rubber bellows to cover the piston so crap builds up and they stick.

Woody wrote: I like the discs that tuck in behind fake Buick finned drums.

I love these but man are they expensive.

On mine I ran the F100 setup and they stopped my 28 roadster pretty darn good. More then enough power to lock up the ply tires I had on it.

The HAMB had a thread on how this guy hacked a set of 40 Ford backing plates to cover a set of discs. Looked cool and was relatively cheap. Even made his own scoop and riveted it on.

I thought I would buy a complete brake kit. Calipers, rotors, and Ebrake.I never thought of corvette calipers that might be cool.

If the car was steel I'd use the big Buick drums and make it period correct. The thought behind this 32 is a RELIABLE daily driver. You know Glass body,powder coated chassis,302 and a five speed. Just good fun.

We do street rod work at the shop and I've got a couple of '32 Fords and a '34. The early Ford drums are pretty easy to do, but the price adds up, they need adjustment from time to time, and they aren't self-energizing (Lincoln and some pickup brakes are). They'll work fine for a light car like that, but it's usually cheaper and easier to go for a disk kit up front from a company like Speedway motors: http://www.speedwaymotors.com/Brake-Kit-1969-77-GM-Caliper-to-Early-Ford-Spindle-Ford-B-P,2004.html $229.99 (the GM pattern is $20 more) Don't know what rear axle you're using, but I'd stick with the stock drums with an e-brake cable/handle kit.

Bottom line with most of these kits is you're stopping a 2200-2500lb car with brakes for a 3000-4000lb car. If they're setup right, they'll lock up the tires all day long.

--Carl www.eclecticmotorworks.com

Carl has it right... who needs ultra trick brembos when you are already overbraked?

I redid the brakes on a forty ford sedan and your right the price of keeping it old school adds up. If I remember correctly I had almost $850 when it was all added up. I'm sure I could have done it much cheaper but the Brakes is the Brakes and I don't skimp in this area.

So far the mid size GM kit looks like the route to take. http://www.speedwaymotors.com/Brake-Kit-1969-77-GM-Caliper-to-Early-Ford-Spindle-F... $229.99 If it looks to uncool I can add the fake Buick drums later.

The rear is a 31 spline 9" Ford

Thanks for the imput.

Those Buick covers are nice, but they're not cheap.

One of the coolest grassroots thing I've seen at some hot rod shows are disk brake covers made out of (believe it or not) frying pans. People take aluminum frying pans, eliminate the handle, notch them to clear the caliper, then polish the snot out of them. Google "frying pan disk brake covers" and you'll see some examples.

--Carl