cheap effective big brake kit using stock calipers but bigger rotors?
 

my old car, 99 firebird, had 12 inch stock rotors.
a few companies made a caliper bracket that spaced out the calipber and made it possible to run 13 inch corvette rotors. That is a great cheap and effective modification, and the vette rotors cost $20 at napa.

i know Roger Mandeville used to do that for the fronts. Used a 13" x 1.25" rotor. but that was pricey because he had to modify the caliper.

i see the RB thread and they use a caliper spacer for the rears so you can re-use your stock rear caliper but with a larger rotor for more mechanical leverage, and better heat absorption.

why can't someone/a company make a CNC caliper bracket for front and rear, and we can source some bigger rotors? or does someone do this already?

You're not going to do much better, at least in the front, with just a larger diameter rotor. The extra thickness is a big part of heat dissapation in most BBK's.

I think Mandevilles conversion is $1100, which is 2 rotors, modified calipers, and an extention bracket. There's always the '99 brakes, but I'm pretty sure even THEY used a wider rotor, even though the caliper is the same in terms of size/pistons.

Honestly, you're better off getting a BBK with better calips that use bigger pads too... alot of the good compounds don't come in FD shape anymore. I was thinking of doing a custom rear upgrade, just because I can't find FD rear pads in PFC compounds anymore.

I know a lot of the 240sx guys have been using STi and Z33 350z rotors and Brembos for a while, they get it easy with a simple drill-out the bolt hole on the knuckle and tah-dah theyre done.

I dunno if the offset of the rotor hat on the FC/FD is hard to find something else to use, but I machined some brackets to fit a Acure Integra ITR Stopetech kit with 13" rotors onto an FC, it wasnt too difficult once we got the dimensions finalized. I'm sure an FD fitment would be similar... but you need the expensive big red calipers to make it all work, since the rotors are over an inch thick.

maybe you can use 5x114 sti or 350z or mustang cobra rotors, but I cant remeber how hard it is to make spacers for the stock rx7 calipers (which I love).

You can pick up a StopTech kit actually made for the car, work like a mofo, and require nothing else for $1700. Bolts on in a couple hours. Sell your stock brakes for a couple hundred and save yourself three weeks in the garage measuring and machining.

this is exactly what ive been pondering about for the past 3 days

that is the way to do it then, because the stoptech parts are incredible and perform so well, its silly to go with anything else if you can afford the stoptech stuff, even their most basic of basic stuff is incredible.

but if you can find a way to use the super inexpensive vette rotors or similar, then you save a lot of cashola. I remember on a 240 forum that guys were looking at the new vette z06 brake calipers and amazed at how cheap the aluminum 6-pot(?) calipers were and even the rotors were relatively inexpensive.

but the bracket adpaters??? i would love to keep my calipers but run big rotor and not a huge rotor but like 12.5-13"

fyi, the StopTech kits increased in price recently

I have been thinking about trying this with my FC. Although I would be more interested in filling up the wheel than the performance of it. I am going to take some measurements this week.

Jesse

I just remembered! I started thinking about doing this when I came across this:
http://powerslot.com/pages/power_slot_plus.html

So I looked on the website and sure enough, they don't make a kit. I emailed PowerSlot to see what it would take to have a kit produced and they said they would need alot of interest.

Start emailing folks!

Jesse

I think RB tried this idea with our front calipers but it would not be worth it.
Something about the dimensions of our FD calipers would barely allow an increase in rotor diameter.

most if not all of the mega-diameter rotors are also thicker, and you cannot then keep the stock oem FD caliper unless you make a spacer to widen it like the Mandeville kit did.

I have almost 13" rotors on my STI, stock (!) and I would love to fit them to the FC if possible but it will take a lot of work... maybe over the winter I can step to it, and a similar mod-to-fit-an-FD setup wouldnt be too different from my FC findings.

Just saw this thread- I recently got my hands on the S4 Porsche Caliper adapters and rotor hats in an unused state. The S4 calipers arent as big or pricey as the Big Reds but they are still an upgrade to the FD ones. The only issue I have is finding the size of the rotor needed for this setup.

Here is a pic of them.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...0220081629.jpg