Baer Brakes was one of the vendors on the Power Tour. They make some hi-performance brake systems that can be used as replacement systems for the stock setups. Most of the systems require 16 and 17 inch wheels although they do have a setup for 15 inch wheels like mine. Anyway, I have 4 wheel discs now and the BAER guy told me their setup would be around 2,500.00. YIKES!!! I more or less decided this wasn't for me but today I was going down the highway and I crunched the right front fender on my car because I couldn't stop fast enough. The first thing that immediately struck me was I sure wish I had those BAER's because I needed to stop mayme 35-50 feet shorter. This wouldn't be a problem with those BAER's and I would have gladly paid the 2500 to avoid this little mishap.

I guess the point is this, If you got 500-600 HP motor, you need 500-600 HP brakes.
Just a thought.

Be safe!!


[This message has been edited by sr71bb (edited 06-17-2000).]

What type of brakes do you currently have on your car? Drum/Drum, Disc/Drum, Disc/Disc,
Currently i'm using the wilwood set up on my car. It is very similar to the original disc on the camaro, but the weight saving's is amazing, the only problem that i have is getting a hard pedal, or should i say complete lack there, they hook good but i like a firmer pedal

Factory Front Disc, Aftermarket Rear Disc. But the main problem is I am not pulling enough vaccum to operate the power booster efficiently. I am getting a electric vaccum pump form Master Power Brakes to remedy this at a cost of around 275.00.

My motor puts out around 10-11 inches of vacuum at idle because of a big cam and power brakes like 15-17 inches of vaccum. The electric pump will put out to 21 inches of vacuum whick should make both my power brake booster and my RS headlights HAPPY!!!!

It was stupid on my part not to immediately install the electric vacuum pump but live and learn!!! Even if it had been installed, I doubt I could have stopped in time but the BAER Brakes would have done the job easily.

I have spared no cost on restoring this car yet I thought the brakes would be more than adequate. WRONG!!! I never anticated that I would have this much HP either but it just goes to show you have to look at the entire package. It reminds me somewhat of the mistakes the factory made when making these muscle cars originally. ALL GO and NO STOP!!!

[This message has been edited by sr71bb (edited 06-17-2000).]

There was a larger rotor used on the later 70's 455 firebirds that is 12" diameter, 1" thick. You'd have to get the caliper mounting brackets to fit them on your car. Or cut yours and space them out. They are the same rotors as used on the 1LE late 80's camaros I think.

A vaccum tank would help too.
The engine should develop quite a bit of vaccum when braking if a stick, or do you have an automatic?
Make shure you are using a good brake pad too. They can help a lot.
Also when you get the brakes working well, make shure you have good front tires.
David

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The older I get, the faster I was!

Yeah David,

I have a R700 and I could tell when I was braking I was getting little if any power assist. It's a pretty helpless feeling really. I use a vaccum tank now but obviously it was inadequate.


Good tip on the 12" rotors.

Thanks!!

[This message has been edited by sr71bb (edited 06-17-2000).]

[This message has been edited by sr71bb (edited 06-18-2000).]

David,
Have you any experiance in a dual caliper set up on a car, meaning 2 calipers per front wheel. I thought i saw a set up like that on a so called "exotic" car, I was just wondering if some body could make almost a mirror image of the brake bracket and mount two calipers per rotor. would you need more vacumm to opertate such a set up?
Any info would be great, thanks in advance
shawn

If you could mount two calipers per wheel, your pedal effort would be cut in HALF, and your pedal travel would DOUBLE.
You don't get something for nothing.

Another thing is you would get more force acting on the brake rotor because you have doubled the amount of caliper piston area on the front wheels.

NOT because you have doubled the brake pad area. If you double the pad area ONLY, you cut the pounds per square inch load on the pad in half. so there is no gain.

The problem on a camaro is the front sway bar gets in the way of an added caliper.

It would also interfere with brake rotor cooling to some extent.

It would be better to do it a different way, maybe a different master cyl bore size.

It's interesting that winston cup cars weigh 3400lbs and I think they go 300 miles or so in a roadrace situation. Not shure what they do at martinsville in miles...

They use more travel on the pedal instead of a booster.

In 67 you could get a disc brake Camaro with manual disc brakes, it used a 1" master instead of 1 1/8" master.

There is quite a difference between a 1" and 1 1/8" bore master cyl.Both pressure and travel.

Also, the master push rod connects higher up on the pedal and you have more leverage, and more travel just from the different pedal geometry.

One of the Lola Formula 5000 cars used dual front calipers. It's usually done where there is not room for a single large caliper and brake pad wear is high so you spread the wear between two calipers.

There is a different way to do it and it's called a MICO master cylinder. Ever heard of it?
David

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The older I get, the faster I was!

[This message has been edited by davidpozzi (edited 06-19-2000).]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by general145:
What type of brakes do you currently have on your car? Drum/Drum, Disc/Drum, Disc/Disc,
Currently i'm using the wilwood set up on my car. It is very similar to the original disc on the camaro, but the weight saving's is amazing, the only problem that i have is getting a hard pedal, or should i say complete lack there, they hook good but i like a firmer pedal<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Do you have power or manual brakes?
One of the questions (misgivings) I had about the Willwood caliper setup is the calipers are very small.
They have the same piston size as a Corvette or early four piston Camaro. But with such a light caliper they should be flexing under such an extreme psi loading. I would guess under a hard stop there is 1000 to 1200 psi line pressure going to the calipers.

Usually these light calipers are used on very light dirt race cars where they don't brake a lot.
A pavement car would use a heavier caliper but they are still close to a thousand pounds lighter than a Camaro.

A car the same weight as a Camaro is a Winston Cup car and they are 3400lbs minimum weight by the rules.
They use a very large model Willwood caliper. The piston size is about the same. Some versions have up to six pistons but they are smaller bore size.

I have no experience with any of these calipers on a heavy car like a Camaro. I have a JFZ version that is very close to the willwood in size and shape on the rear of my Lola race car but that car is 1600lbs and it takes a lot less line pressure to stop it.

Almost exactly half.

The reasion I've thought a lot about all this is I'm thinking of replacing my front brakes on my 67 Camaro and want the maximum braking I can get on it with 15" wheels. I will probably take the car out to Laguna Seca and do some laps and that course is very hard on brakes.
I've been looking at all the willwood type kits and caliper flex is what concerned me with the Willwood kit.

Willwood makes several larger calipers that are stiffer. They all share the same 3" bolt spacing. I'm not shure if they are all made for the same rotor diamiter.

I've been looking at the SuperLite III as kind of a minimum size for me. I'll use a 11 3/4" dia rotor or 12", width of 1 1/4" like a late 60"s Corvette used.

I've been reading several books on racing brake systems. That's why I'm kinda "up" on brake systems.

I've hesitated putting people off on the light caliper setups because I don't have any experience with them on Camaros. So I'd appreciate hearing what you think of them.
Thanks, David

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The older I get, the faster I was!

David,

I don't know a whole lot about the caliper flex on the particular model im using, but a wilwood tech said that they worked better than the original 4 piston caliper on the 67 camaro. For your info i have power brakes, the on thing that im having trouble with is bleeding teh brakes cause you littrelly need to take them off the car to do it properly. other than that the weight savings is amazing, both of the loaded spindels seemed to way less than on of the cast iron set up on the original.(never actaully weighed the the loaded spindles).

The kit say's "These kits are designed for vehicles over 2800 pounds that are equipped with either drum or disc rear brakes."

But they do have bigger brake kits now so i have read, check out http://www.martelbros.com/wilwood/
they have a heavy gt kit that offers mor versatility. You might also want to look in to using one of there 6 piston calipers because i belive you can use a smaller rotor and retain the 15".

I'd be really interested if you could measure the caliper deflection. If you could put a dial caliper across the caliper side to side in the middle of it and step on the brake pedal with the engine running so you have vaccum boost.
In order to put a small caliper on a large OD rotor, you have to move the thru bolts off the center line of the pistons. This makes the caliper more flexable.
The larger calipers have more space between the outer bolts and they can be more in line with the piston bores.
Also, have someone step on the brakes while you look at the calipers. Do they move or twist?
David

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The older I get, the faster I was!

Has anyone seen a comparison article written on these brake systems? I agree that the Baer Brake systems seem like a lot of money, but if the car truly stops in a much shorter distance, it would be worth consideration. Just wondering stock drum vs. stock front disc vs. stock 4 wheel disc vs some of these exotic setups??