Upgrade 11.75" Dynalite to Superlite opinions?
 

This season we are going to run in a 2nd class from our normal Classic Japanese Series.

Classic Japanes series runs 1 Qualy, 1 Grid start 8 lap race. 2 Full Handicap 8 Lap races.

To date the 11.75" with Dynalite and Gloc Pads (R18 fr r10 rear) have been pretty good. We run 2.5" ducts and the brakes are mostly staying in temp.

The new to NZ, Improved Production races are 1 Qualy, 1 Standing grid Start 30 Minutes. 1 Reverse Grid Standing Start 30 mins.

I am concerned we will be getting marginal (or worse) in heat with these longer races and wonder if the Superlite caliper with more pad area AND thicker pad will improve braking AND improve headroom on the heat side.....

Conversely I am also concerned with the weight penalty.

Anyone have an opinion or better yet experience on this?

Rule #1.. Never choose weight over thermal capacity and torque when setting up your brake system.

Make sure you have the thermal capacity and torque yo need. Then get the lightest system your budget will allow. Like choosing wheels. Get the correct width and offset first. Then choose the lightest your budget will allow. Don't do the m.net thing of placing weight on an altar and ending with a very crappy and very light car.

The Superlite will improve both thermal capacity and to some extent, torque. I like the Dynalite up to about 200whp. The Dynapro 4pot from OEM up to about 250-300whp. Superlite from there up.
Final numbers depend on weight and grip too. Light car with no grip doesn't need much brakes. Heavy car with lots of grip may need monster brakes even at 200whp. You are light and not much power (<200whp?) but have lots of grip. You're a candidate for Dynapro's at the very least.

my .02

Thanks Emilio.

Sounds like we are well in the Superlite window at 960 kg's and at 300+ whp. Maybe more if we get the water meth working.

Also dropping aero this year so my impression is this will be harder on the brakes.

Seems like Superlite kit is the way forward, so that raises another question.....

Going Superlite is presumably going to increase brake bias to the front further than it already is.

In my 4 years of racing this car (mostly WITH 11.75" front) and Goodwin v3 rear kit, which I believe is the same as the normal 'Sport" upgrade...we have NEVER locked the rears. Wet dry, Suspension soft/hard etc.

My feel is that we are leaving some brake performance on the table by not having more rear available.

Am I on the right track with this thinking and is there an option to improve rear braking performance to better match the superlite/11.75" front setup and more so, to the point a brake balance unit might become useful?

There are few Superlites that share the same approximate piston area as the Dynalite and OEM Miata brakes. Doesn't need to be exactly the same. You'll fiddle with pad compounds, rotor sizes. Also, stiffer brackets will affect how much hydraulic leverage is being applied.
Assuming your DL4's came from us, they are around 3.0" area, about the same as OEM. Just run more rear pad if you lack bite there. Bullet and Vegas run R18 front, R12 rear.

Right now, I think TSE is the only vendor with a ready to ship Superlite kit. We are running the TSE Superlite kit on our S1 as a matter of fact. Our Superlite based kit is roughly 6 months away, will utilize radial mounts, a thicker rotor than the common .810" and several innovative new features that have not been seen before. If you need brake now, contact Andrew.

Thanks for the technical advice, really appreciated everyone :bowdown: :bigtu:

re brake bias, My understanding is that you can only remove rear so at this point when I believe we could afford to ADD rear, a brake bias valve is of no benefit yet?

Also, in terms of rear, would going down a compound ADD rear torque/bias...i.e. back down to r8 from r10?

THe suggestion is actually the opposite : Go up in pad compound to get more aggressive behavior and, in the case of too much rear then trim with the prop valve

No. Inline prop valves only affect straight line threshold braking. Get your brake torque dialed with the valve full open. Fine tune threshold with valve. If you need to choke the rears off with a prop valve, you will tend to have too much rear torque when trail braking.

Kiwi is really ready for a booster delete and mechanical proportioning set up.

We also have this thing called a VBBC or a variable brake boost controller. Its pretty self explanatory. Basically, when closed, you pretty much have manual brakes, when open, you have OEM boost; and you can set it to anything in between based on personal preference.

I know you have the booster delete MC on the site and we are seriously considering that but I have never seen anything about Miata's with a mechanical proportioning setup.

Historically in other race cars I have seen dual masters with a balance bar between front and rear for bias but never to an all in one MC like you list OR on a standard pedal box...if that is what you meant?

Oh and another data point I just remembered. The original V3 Goodwin rear kit adapted the 1600 caliper so presumably going to the 1800 caliper will give more rear?

Does anyone do a race suitable willwood rear caliper kit...would be nice to reduce / remove pad taper that we suffer from on the oem 1600 caliper :)

No off-the-shelf race caliper rear for the early cars that I know of. NA6 and NA8/NB1 rear calipers are the same, both smaller piston than Sport. Try Sports for more torque.

No booster delete kit is not on our website. Someone posted here or in the booster delete thread, a link to a website in the UK.

Our new S1 build has no booster, independent F/R masters, Tilton pedals.

Wilwood Powerlite rear brake kit for factory Sport rotors:

Powerlite Kit Rear

A very race suitable rear caliper kit:

Goodwin Racing: StopTech Rear STR21 RACE Brake Kit

That is what I am running on Hyper, with a 2-piece rear rotor instead of the solid rotor for some additional weight saved. We can supply the caliper kit without the rotors if desired.

Pad volume of STR21 (1.5") appears to be less than the OEM Sport pad, by my rough measurements at least. Advantage is that it's lighter. We're still using some ancient Goodwin V4 (DBA) 2 piece rear rotors that happen to be Sport Brake diameter and offset with Sport calipers on our S1's.

This is correct. I'm still on my first set of pads (currently at 70% after last post-race inspection). Thus, not concerned with rear pad volume.

Does anyone know if the sport calipers will mount on non sport caliper brackets? I have the old M-Tuned sport rotor kit and would love to be able to use the cheaper/easier to find 1.8 pads with sport calipers.

NA8 and Sport rear calipers are interchangeable on the bracket (carrier). We ran that configuration on Crusher when it had 11" Wilwoods up front to balance torque.

So Superlight front with Sport rear sounds the go.

How hard is it to find rear sport calipers over there?...its mission impossible here.

Anyone know of any for sale?