Big Brakes for Little Bucks

Disclaimer: While this set up is certainly cheaper than any big break kit out there it is also heavier and I am not suggesting or endorsing that anyone else try this on their car. 

The brake set up I have run the last 2 summers is stock 96 Miata with Hawk HP+ pads.  It was without a doubt the worst brakes I have ever experienced in any car I have owned!

So time for a change!  But of course I could not just go spend 1500 bucks on a proper big brake kit.  Way to easy and dull.  So I spent way too many hours learning about hydraulic piston surface area and analyzing specs such as rotor offset, thickness and weight just to name a few and came up with this plan:

Old front rotor 254mm (10”) going to a 2000 Corvette 325mm (12.8”) rotor - yeah that's BIG!

Old single piston front caliper with a piston area of 3.14” going to 2000 Camaro two piston caliper with a total piston area of 4.70”

Old rear rotor non vented 251mm (9.9”)  going to 07 Mini Cooper vented 294mm (11.6”) rotor.

Old single piston caliper with a piston area of 1.22” going to 1995 Camaro single piston caliper with a piston area of 1.95”

Old master cylinder bore 7/8” going to 1996 Explorer 1 1/8” bore

Adjustable purporting valve is already installed on the car.
 

I fought long and hard not to redrill rotors but there was just no other way to get the right offset for the car and thickness for the calipers. 

I also fought with myself not to go bigger than I did but felt the added weight and $$ of 14” rotors was just too much....

I started with the back and came up with a simple yet efficient design to hang the calipers. .

 It's hard to tell what is going on here but it's 2 pieces of 1/8th inch plate with the spindle sandwiched inbetween them and the caliper bolted to them as well.

(Note the nut is loose and the bottom bolt just catching the first threads because everything is finger tight or less in these shots)

And now you see why I chose the 95 Camaro caliper.  The parking brake cable on that caliper is the same set up as the stock Miata and it works perfect!

The calipers may look a bit small for the rotors but these are front Cooper rotors so there is a bit more machined surface than needed for the rear application. 

The Miata calipers were the same way it's just that area was not machined.  This is the new rear rotors compared to the old ones.

 The master cyl bolts right up and fits perfectly even though it is quite a bit larger. 

I saved the front till last because I wanted this to be the best.  This is the new and old front calipers side by side.

It took 3 versions on the front ones to get a set of brackets I was comfortable with.  This is an area I want to over build for sure!   It's the same basic set up as the back with a plate on each side of the spindle mount and caliper mount.

The way the spindle is I should have used a larger rotor and it would have made things much easier.   So the top is spaced back much farther than the bottom and the caliper is rotated rearward which is the only way I make room for the bolts to clear each other. It's probably not the ideal caliper position but so far it has worked fine.

 

And assembled just to see it... 

Just like last time bleeding this car proved to be most difficult and I had to reverse bleed it from the bottom up. 

Even this didn't get it all and I ended up making a DIY pressure bleeder too out of a hunk of PVC pipe that worked great.  

 While I had her torn down I also replaced all the suspension bushings with polyurethane and rebuilt the front sway bar links with heim joints so I had to align it before I could road test anything.  

DIY of course!

 Results?  Before and after shots here and they did fill up the big wheels like I wanted them too. 

But more important is I did a shake down at an autocross and though they performed flawlessly.  The pedal feel is much improved and the on tear down I could see no evidence of my brackets being stressed.  So it was off to the track.

I need to do some work on cooling for sure but wow do these brakes haul it down from 140 to 60 with ease.  They really dig in and seem to have no limit to the stopping power

 And the tally?? Oh yeah it's a good one

20ish hours of research,
31 hours of fabricating and wrenching
Sold the stock brakes for 100 bucks
$314.53 in parts

 Bottom line $214.53 and really good brakes!

So now she's back in the shop working on brake cooling..

 

and replacing a CV joint that cooked and broke at the track.

 

 

 It was caused by the exhaust running just below it with no shielding to it.  Over the years the grease dried out of it and it's been going bad for along time.  Don't know why I couldn't tell but I couldn't! 

Sadly it cut my weekend short and put her on the trailer home from the track. 

 

 

So until next time I hope you are walking with Christ and living in the joy of what He has done for us! 

 

Trip report: V8 Miatas invade The Mitty!

This event started last Thanksgiving when a bunch of us cylinder over achievers from V8miata.net decided we need to get together.

As the idea took shape The Mitty quickly bubbled to the first choice of venues.  The Mitty is a historic racing weekend at Road Atlanta with 350 race cars of every type you can imagine mostly from the 60s and 70s.

The event also features complete access to the paddock which was worth the trip in itself!

So now we had a plan but being over achievers we needed a goal.  The most V8 Miatas ever in one place was 13 so the challenge was before us. 

Dare we shoot to double that?

As things unfolded Flyin’ Miata got wind of what we were doing and stepped up to sponsor the event with tee shirts, a car corral and a half dozen laps on Road Atlanta.  How does one begin to say Thank you to that?

PLEASE SUPPORT FLYIN' MIATA!

 

Now I need to back up to my annual trip to Omaha with my son at Christmas for a sec.  Due to me being very dumb I put the car in the ditch so for me prep on the car for the Mitty run started weeks before the event.

The good news is no real damage was done and I was driving.  The bad news is my preparations ended in disaster a few hours before I was to leave.  I have not dropped a car in 25 years of wrenching but sure enough Jenna slipped off the jack and destroyed a tie rod end.

So it’s 10pm on the night before a 3000 mile trip with no chance of finding a tie rod end for a Miata within 100 miles of me.   No worries this is Road Kill after all so I whipped up a very micky mouse splint, did a quick alignment and was in bed by 1am.

I rolled out in the morning just as planned.

The top came down by Missouri and pretty much never went back up!

My first stop on the tour was at a fellow V8 guy that is just getting started on his build.  We set his hard top on Jenna just to see what it looks like but I’ll not be owning one any time soon. 

I left him the same smile everyone has the first time they drive a V8 Miata

Day 2 on to the Peach tree state

I stayed with a fellow V8er that built his car at the same time I did.  He lives way up in the hills of North Georgia so we did some rock crawling with her. 
 

Shannon is a great guy (and cook) and we stayed up way too late catching up.  

 

The MPG for the first half of the trip would have been 28 had it not been for that white C6 vette.  They always think I am all rice and no spice…

Friday was on to the Mitty and wow what a day it was! 

 

Friday evening was the track time and while they tried to keep us in line there may have been some, ahh, less restricted maneuvers occur on the backside corners and straight…

That is my friend Shannon in front of me. He has a beautiful car!

 

 

After the track time it was a picnic hosted by V8 Roadsters in their vendor both and as you might expect no one talked about the weather!

Saturday it rained pretty hard in the morning so lots of car clubs did not show up and several of our guys did not either.  I was pulled so hard to the track I doubt I could have taken much more visiting anyway so I’ll summarize the day with 2 minutes from my favorite race and the assurance that the rest of the events were no less epic.

Saturday Night was dinner hosted by MX5 Atlanta and Sunday morning my Son and I rolled out to the tail of the dragon.  

Another 2 minute video if you are interested in seeing that.

From there it was off to my CMS friend Tom with a little detour on the way.  Nothing like the smell of fresh donor car in the morning!

My friend Tom is a great guy and so nearly my twin it’s uncanny.  We both play drums in bands and are in to the same kind of music.  We both love sim racing, autocross and historic racing.  And we both are tinkerers that are just as happy to work on a car as to drive one.  Oh and the car of choice is of course the Miata!

Miatas tend to consume alignment bolts if you drive them hard and the new set on my bench didn’t make it to the car before the trip and sure enough one of them moved on the dragon.  So Monday morning a quick tire rotate and field alignment in a parking lot started my day.

From there it was just road tripping home with a stop or 2 along the way to see the sights.  

As the sun set over Iowa I felt the need for a pick me up and what better than a…

I made it home around mid-night and the stats are the trip are:

About 2000 of that 2800 miles was with the top down.  (The top speed was from a track event last summer not the trip)

The thing I always enjoy about traveling in a cartoon character of a car is so many people ask about it.   LeeRoy in the Illinois rest stop is restoring a vintage dragster and asked about the hood latches.  Mike in the Mazda 3 in Kentucky said he would buy my gas if I gave him a ride.   The guy in Missouri said he has an LS1 swapped RX7 he started for the first time over the weekend.  By God’s grace I have no sense of time so I don’t notice or care when a 15 minute gas stop turns into a 45 minute visit.  

All in all it was an absolutely delightful trip that I hope to repeat next year.

So did we meet the challenge of 26 V8 Miatas at Mitty?  Well yours truly was as in charge as anyone is for such things was having too much fun to remember to count so we are not sure.  But there was no shortage of horse power in that parking lot!

 

LFX V6 car using the aluminum 323hp VVT V6 and 6 speed from the latest Camaro.

LSA 6.2L / 556HP supercharged Exocet

LS3 V8 Exocet