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4 Piston DynaPro caliper upgrade for almost ALL Big Brake Kits
These days most of us have put hundreds or thousands of hard track miles through our big brake kits. Time to rebuild the calipers? Take the opportunity to update your kit to the newer, much stronger DynaPro 4-piston caliper.
The old Dynalite caliper has been the workhorse of many Miata big brake kits for decades. It does the job but it flexes under heavy use and high heat, which you notice in pedal feel and often results in "tapering" of the pad as it wears. The DynaPro caliper is designed as a drop-in replacement for the Dynalite, but is much more rigid. The DynaPro features a "Quick-E-Clip" (much nicer than cotter pins) and pads load from the top.
** Bolt-on replacement for ANY 11" or 11.75" kit that currently uses the Dynalite 4 piston. Your brackets, lines, etc. are all compatible.
** Same balance: Piston size is the same 3.00 in² so brake bias remains the same.
** Same great wheel clearance: the body width is actually a hair narrower than the Dynalite, and height is the same.
** Same great pad options: The DynaPro 4 uses the 7812 pad shape. Same wide variety of affordable pads as you have with the Dynalite - Hawk, Porterfield, Carbotech, Cobalt, etc. We now list the pad shape "code" in the title of all of our pads, so you can view our pad options for this caliper by simply typing "7812" in the search box on our site: Good-win-racing.com
** Some pads for the Dynalite will fit the DynaPro as well; Pads by Hawk and Performance Friction which use the generic 3-hole backing plate drop right in to the DynaPro - all you need to do is swap the DynaPro's E clip for standard cotter pins, or notch the pad's backing plate to clear the E clip. Our PFC pads have this note and can be found here. Yes, you can run Porsche Cup Car pad technology for less than $80/set of pads in these.
Thanks for pointing this out. I've forced a refresh now that I'm in the office, not sure why it didn't take the change earlier. Should be good now.
The DynaPro 4 has been around for a bit but it has now reached a pricepoint that makes it a no-brainer substitute for the older Dynalite. Back when it was close to $300 per caliper (most likely due to lower production quantities) it wasn't justifiable.
<p>What makes the lug mount dynapro less flexy than the lug mount dynalite? I thought the flex came because we were using lug mounted calipers instead of radial mounted.</p>
The strength of the caliper itself affects overall rigidity by a whole order of magnitude more than the relatively small difference between radial and lug mounting styles - assuming that you have a strong, well engineered caliper bracket in either case - either of those bracket styles could be designed poorly and that would then increase flex.
The dynalite's body is just significantly flexible for a "fixed" multi-piston caliper, and this is much improved in the DynaPro. The dynalite is old - like, same caliper that was used in the original Goodwin Racing BBK nearly two decades ago. Tech has come a long way, and the DynaPro brings many improvements with it.
Of course the big benefit in staying with the lug mount version here, is the caliper "drops in" to your current kit in place of the Dynalite, rather than having to change to a whole new kit with an alternate mounting design.
I've used both the DynaPro 4 Radial mount (as used in the newest version of the V8Roadster BBK) and the DynaPro 4 Lug Mount retrofitted to a kit that came with a Dynalite and pedal feel is similarly excellent between the two, both feeling substantially better than the Dynalite.
We carry the full range of Hawk and Porterfield pads for the 7812 shape that fits the DynaPro. Carbotech also makes their full range in this shape, so you're well covered with drop-in pad options for this caliper.
The info I touched on in the original post is that the 7112 (Dynalite) pads are actually the same size and thickness as the 7812. Many of the brands making those pads use a standard 3-hole backing plate, which actually has the two side holes needed for the 7812's pins in addition to the center top holes for a 7112 cotter pin. This gives you even more options, so if you already have 7112 pads on your shelf, or if you want to run a pad that is available at super low cost for the Dynalite - such as Performance Friction - you can actually do that quite easily one of two ways:
A) The simplest solution is to swap the DynaPro's Quick-E-Clip for a pair of standard cotter pins and voila, these 3-hole 7112 pads fit in the DynaPro. No pic necessary as it's super straight-forward.
B) But, if you're a big fan of the Quick-E-Clip like me, a little notching of the backing plate will make everything clear the E-Clip's pins in the center and you're good to go.
Here's a pic with the standard 7112 PFC pad on top, and the same pad modified below it. I got a little fancy with the carbide grinder on these, but three simple straight cuts will do the job, since you don't need any of that center portion:
Voila, $75 PFC pads in the DynaPro caliper with the E-clip:
Ok, so that's neat. Thank you for taking the time to do the work and post the pics!
I want to know more about the thing we discussed in the other thread, so I can eventually buy your rear kit to go with these calipers on my existing 11.75 front kit.
Just to give some insight/sneak peek at why we've just introduced the DynaPro 4 upgrade option for existing front kits... There's going to be even more reasons to switch to the DP4 soon as well. Working with Wilwood on a custom DynaPro 4 for the rear of the car that matches the bias we want with correct piston size back there, but will take the same 7812 pad as the front. This will solve the issues we run into where the pad we want to run all around is available for nice and cheap for a front Wilwood caliper application, but the matching compound is either much more expensive or not available at all for the factory caliper in the rear. Buy one pair of pads, it fits all four corners of the car. Oh, and rear pad life will be stupid good.
</p><p>As in the front and rear calipers will be different? IOW, I could not pick up a new set of DynaPros for the front of my car (Goodwin BBK) and move the existing Lites to the rear. If different, will the rears have a parking brake or at least the option for one? I was currently considering FM's rear calipers with V8R's rotor. Though that's big $$$.</p>
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<p></p><p>As in the front and rear calipers will be different? IOW, I could not pick up a new set of DynaPros for the front of my car (Goodwin BBK) and move the existing Lites to the rear. If different, will the rears have a parking brake or at least the option for one? I was currently considering FM's rear calipers with V8R's rotor. Though that's big $$$.</p>
Rear caliper needs totally different piston size, and front calipers are for the wrong rotor width to boot.
Want...yesterday! Will fill my shelf with these pads.
Parking brake? (I know, but just encouraging).
+1 for just notching the pad.
"Working with Wilwood on a custom DynaPro 4 for the rear of the car that matches the bias we want with correct piston size back there, but will take the same 7812 pad as the front."
08-18-2015, 03:11 PM
4 Piston DynaPro caliper upgrade for almost ALL Big Brake Kits
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