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Got a day in on the car and wrapped up the brakes. All bled and I'm thankful for the bleed ports on the Wilwood master. Though having a bleed port there was new to me, it proved to be very helpful in getting the system bled (and negating need for bench bleeding).
What magical port is this that you speak about? I just bench bleeded it woulda been nice to have a simpler bleed port. Car's lookin good.
And it's back on the ground ready for an alignment tomorrow. I would have taken the car to work today, but we got snow again, so here she sits. Hoping for a clear day tomorrow!
What magical port is this that you speak about? I just bench bleeded it woulda been nice to have a simpler bleed port. Car's lookin good.
If you're a normal (lazy) person like me you just put down some paper towels under the master and crack the flare nuts open and closed like bleeders on the master.
My previous alignment + notes of things I wanted changed:
New alignment:
Notes on alignment:
Dat slippage! Rear camber was way off. Still a bit more toe in the rear than I wanted to target, but sooo much better. he said he had to keep some toe in there to reach an even 2.5* in the rear.
Psyched on 3.0 f camber. Hoping for more traction under braking, and also that .5* f/r camber stagger is sexy.
Gonna get this home before I drive it too hard, and mark and torque those alignment bolts myself. I always do this, but my last alignment I didn't get to mark in time before the trackday.
Notes on the car:
Pad rattle is a bit annoying, at first I was like WTF did I forget to torque. Remember I live on a dirt road, that's where i noticed it the most, but even at slow speeds I can hear 'em kinda rattling around. Anyone have a fix for this, or is that just "race car stuff"?
Brakes feel AMAZING. Broke in the pads with a few 100+MPH hard stops. **** rips my face off the car feels great.
The handling on the car is perfect, excited for this weekend. The car feels stable and fast.
Pad rattle is a bit annoying, at first I was like WTF did I forget to torque. Remember I live on a dirt road, that's where i noticed it the most, but even at slow speeds I can hear 'em kinda rattling around. Anyone have a fix for this, or is that just "race car stuff"?
Brakes feel AMAZING. Broke in the pads with a few 100+MPH hard stops. **** rips my face off the car feels great.
The handling on the car is perfect, excited for this weekend. The car feels stable and fast.
I had the same reaction on my first drive with them haha!
As far as I can tell, that's just the nature of the beast. I've not had any luck finding an anti rattle spring or clip for the 7420 pad shape. Racecar problems. I may try to get a larger diameter bridge bolt spacer cut to limit their movement but I don't expect it to fully eliminate the rattle.
Damn, looking good! Stoked to hear how she does this weekend. How awesome is that firm-*** brake pedal feel?
I've never experienced pad rattle on my car. Wish I had some feedback for you.
That's because your car is already full racecar and you didn't detect the additional NVH! Kidding, I actually don't know why, but it was pretty obvious to me right away I thought something was loose.
The brake pedal, and brakes in general feel amazing. I wanna get some miles on them and do a final re-bleed, and pedal adjustment. I didn't touch the adjustment rod, and there's a bit of dead space I'd like to eliminate. Once the brakes come on the pedal is like a brick and doesn't move, and the car rips your face off decellerating.
Originally Posted by OptionXIII
I had the same reaction on my first drive with them haha!
As far as I can tell, that's just the nature of the beast. I've not had any luck finding an anti rattle spring or clip for the 7420 pad shape. Racecar problems. I may try to get a larger diameter bridge bolt spacer cut to limit their movement but I don't expect it to fully eliminate the rattle.
Keep us posted if you find a solution! I was already looking for pad springs and came to the same conclusion, nothing off the shelf I could find. It's really not a huge deal, but I can even hear them once moving, I.E. 20 MPH with the windows down. I DID NOT grease the pads, as per Supermiata recommendations, I could see some grease helping out with that for a while at least.
Pad rattle is a bit annoying, at first I was like WTF did I forget to torque. Remember I live on a dirt road, that's where i noticed it the most, but even at slow speeds I can hear 'em kinda rattling around. Anyone have a fix for this, or is that just "race car stuff"?
Brakes feel AMAZING. Broke in the pads with a few 100+MPH hard stops. **** rips my face off the car feels great.
The handling on the car is perfect, excited for this weekend. The car feels stable and fast.
Interesting.. I probably just don't notice the pad rattle as the car is new to me. It's a noisy car so hard to tell what's what to be honest. After putting in the Mazda comp engine mounts there's noticeably more NVH as expected. I swapped pads the other day and noticed one of the bridge bolt spacers I couldn't get to to sit snug without it spinning. One side I got snug and the other didn't snug down. I used a bit of anti seize to avoid the locknut galling and breaking like I had on the passenger side.
Good to hear the brakes feel good. I like the combination of the 1" MC and the new brakes. My car just needs more power now. Make sure you leave that play in the top of the brake pedal as it's needed (if you read my thread you saw the problem I had). I had to add about a 1/4" back at the track.
Note: not supermiata's fault as far as i can tell, all of their parts of the kit were great. This friction ring seems way outta spec though and is literally slapping the pads around which makes terrible noises under about 25mph.
Also note that I noticed this when I first installed the brakes, but figured it'd be fine. Before even using the brakes I had the rattle on my first drive, so it's not like I warped them or anything. Not that i think i could on the street if i tried.
I followed SM instructions to the letter, torque specs and pattern. I dont see how i could have messed up but open to the possibility! Any input accepted here. It's on a brand new brofab hub.
I ran out of time last night, but I want to measure the runout on the hat/hub to make sure it's in spec, since it's also new. Or throw the rotor on the rear hub and test it there.
Ah, sh*t! I should've recalled this and chimed in as soon as you mentioned pad rattle.
I had the same issue with my 1.1" rotor rings. I bought my BBK used so I believe the included rings were already resurfaced before I got them. However, upon replacing my front rotor rings last October, I ran into the same issue you just showed us. No pad rattle for me, but with the new rings the car would start shuddering very noticeably at freeway speeds. My Brofab hubs and rotor hats had no runout, but the rings were not straight out of the box. Machining the new rotor rings fixed the issue. I think I had to take ~0.030" total off of each ring to get them straight.
Also not sure if you have this issue but I noticed that there was a miniscule amount of clearance between my Brofab hub spacer and rotor hat, allowing for a tiny bit of vertical runout on the rotor. I eliminated the clearance by wrapping a bit of aluminum foil tape around the hub spacer. Don't think that was an issue but I figured it was best to eliminate the vertical runout if I could. A quick search didn't bring up any similar cases.
Hahahaha, we all keep running into the same issues!
I had a runout issue as well, but didn't think it worth mentioning due to my not using a kit. In my case, I blamed it on the fact that I changed the design (rotor:hub offset) as parts were being made. After I found the runout had him machine a second set with specs set in stone from the start, and it dramatically cut my pad rattle. It's good to know that the runout I still have is likely due to Wilwood, and not my friends work!
I'm not sure how it is with the threaded aluminum hats, but with my nut and bolt rotor fasteners, I also have to center the rotor when mounting it to the hat. That makes rotor replacement quite a chore, but hopefully one I won't have to do often.
Yeah, Nate's are the Wilwood rotors too, not even our Supermiata HD rotors. Haven't typically seen runout issues on the Wilwood bits, quite a bummer. We'll get him sorted, just want to confirm there are no other issues so we can get him all the bits he needs first try.
I know you're going to the track this weekend too Nate, if you're OK with running them feel free to do so since the new bits won't arrive in time.
Thanks for the input guys. And again to make it clear I harbor no bad feelings about the kit, everything is super quality and went together easily. Top notch stuff and I don't blame them for what appears to be a wilwood issue. SM has always done me right even when I come into issues, which is why I always go to them first.
Originally Posted by Z_WAAAAAZ
Ah, sh*t! I should've recalled this and chimed in as soon as you mentioned pad rattle.
Originally Posted by OptionXIII
Hahahaha, we all keep running into the same issues!
This makes me feel better in some way, haha! Thanks for the input here guys.
Originally Posted by turbofan
I know you're going to the track this weekend too Nate, if you're OK with running them feel free to do so since the new bits won't arrive in time.
I was definitely considering running them, though I'd hate for the rotors to put extra stress on the hats, or wear the pads funny, etc. If you think it's aight, I'll most likely go for it. It's just a shakedown day anyways so probably won't be pushing things too hard.
I also considered taking 'em to NAPA and seeing if they can turn them true for me. Though again, I'm skeptical of putting my brand new equipment on their rotor turning machine.
I'll post some more updates tonight once I 100% confirm the runout isn't in the hats or the hub.
Wow man that blows regarding the runout on those rotors. Honestly I didn't check mine carefully but maybe I lucked out with my kit. *fingers crossed*. I believe mine are just the "standard" wilwood friction rings/rotors. Next time I got the car up on jackstands I will check them again but I don't recall the rotor being that off. I'm pretty sure I don't have any noise coming from the brakes and the rotors spin smoothly.
getting straight rotors isn't lucking out, most rotors are straight. if they're warped you'll know it - if everything is working great then you're good to go.
Nate - feel free to do the machining - if you do that I will happily give a partial refund, but at that point I wouldn't be able to send them back to wilwood for a credit so I wouldn't be able to send new rotors for free.
Anyway, email me with what you wanna do and we'll sort it out.
More info later, still workin on the car, but it's the ******' hubs. More specifically, the machined adapter rings to convert the brofab BMW hubs to miata offset.
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why we do not jump to conclusions.
No need to be sorry. I always feel bad asking people to go back for more measurements when they first present some sort of flaw, but this justifies that!
More info later, still workin on the car, but it's the ******' hubs. More specifically, the machined adapter rings to convert the brofab BMW hubs to miata offset.
Good to hear you located the problem. Hopefully a rock or something was behind the machined spacer..
Originally Posted by turbofan
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why we do not jump to conclusions.
For sure.. seen and made plenty of mistakes in my days.
What's the old saying about changing more than one thing at once? Long story short, this brofab spacer/adapter has some incredible runout and I'm pretty disappointed with it.
Billet spacer runout (everything is perfectly clean):
In general my first impressions with the brohab hubs aren't great. All the studs are threaded into the hub and backed off when I pulled the wheels off the first time. The studs were red loctited in, and the wheels were only torqued to 85 ft lbs. The spacers have pretty bad tolerances, I can see with the naked eye when rotating it that it has a wobble to it. The drivers side one is better, but nowhere near perfect. I'll get in touch with Brofab and see about getting some new spacers, so stay tuned. I like supporting smaller miata businesses so I'm not trying to throw shade or anything. I'm sure they will correct it, but it has me second guessing using a different hub with an adapter spacer. That said, the next cheapest option is 2x the cost, so hopefully they can get this sorted.
Smaller side of the adapter:
Largest measurement:
Thank you very much to Ed at SM for helping diagnose. I should have measured the hub runout before even contacting them, but they are so helpful so I always hit 'em up when I have issues with anything related to an install of their products. Plus I wanna talk to Ed.
I also wanted to say that swapping the hubs out was SO much easier with the boxmount kit vs stock brakes. Pulling the calipers was a breeze, tolerances on everything feel perfect, and I didn't even have to pull the pads. From a maintenance perspective I'm loving the kit already. I think literally my only gripes are the insane amount of brake dust the pads make, and that the bleeder valves seem to need to be torqued tighter than I'm comfortable with in order to not leak.
I just bench bleeded it woulda been nice to have a simpler bleed port. Car's lookin good.
04-02-2024, 11:12 AM
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Make sure you leave that play in the top of the brake pedal as it's needed (if you read my thread you saw the problem I had). I had to add about a 1/4" back at the track.
