Wilwood 4 piston rear brakes?
 

Does anyone make a kit or even just a bracket to run a dynalite/dynapro caliper with a standard 11" or so vented front rotor out back? I thought I saw something like this a while back but can't seem to find any info on it.

I'm wanting to upgrade my fronts to the Dynapro 6 caliper and maybe reuse the dynalites for the rear with a nice vented rotor.

I already run a hydraulic hand/park brake and would really love to just ditch the crappy factory rear calipers with their manuall adjustments that love to seize up in time for every pad swap. Currently running the 11" sport setup out back with near impossible to find in a days notice sport calipers.

Thanks

6 piston calipers over kill imho, 4 pistons should be just fine - as of now, the only rear option using Wilwoods is going to a V8R kit - found on 949.

I'd love a single-piston rear Wilwood kit.

949 sold the kit your looking for but it may have been abandoned.

We've got something in the works. I'll post some details later this week. If you've already got a hydro handbrake (or you're willing to ditch the handbrake), our kit will be the one you want.

I didn't want to spill the beans :) but you know I'm a sucka for the upgrade.

I would like to have Wilwood calipers on the rears just to make changing the pads as easy as it is on the front (which has Wilwoood calipers). And, all four corners would use the same pads, which incidentally are also cheaper than the stock ones.

Not if you do it right. If you're willing to sacrifice 1lb+ of caliper weight and a massive loss in pedal feel to run Dynalites in the back, be my guest. We opted for a lighter caliper with the correct piston area so you keep your pedal feel, improve bias, and drop a TON of weight all at the same time. The pads are still cheap, but they aren't the same as Dynalite pads.

This looks very promising. Hopefully I've found myself a Christmas present :drool:

We're working with Andrew on this kit as we have similar goals.

- Proper brake balance with similar or same compounds with prop valve nearly full open

- Solid pedal and modulation

- Reduce weight

- Fast pad swaps

We will offer the resultant TSE race rear kit on our site as well.

I'm assuming no parking brake, right?

i'm building the 2 piston rear right now. i'm using the dba rotors that come with good win bbk/

Bonus points for 5.25" lug mount and 11.75" rotor so I don't need a new bracket. I've looked around for something like that, but there aren't many options. There's the 4 piston dynapro lug mount w/ 1.58 piston area which is kind of close to the rear sport caliper area.

I am building a kit for my car, if anyone else is interested let me know. I will be using a 2 piston Wilwood caliper and DIY mounts. Pictures of the calipers I will be using:
https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1349826175
https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1349826175

We decided against a 2-pot caliper because we had concerns about poor pad life. The Powerlite 4-pots we went with are only half a pound heavier anyway, and they have significantly more pad area (1.1sq.in vs 1.8 sq.in IIRC).

Look forward to finally seeing a good rear kit. Guess my sport calipers just got old.

Well then maybe I could still run Dynalite pads in the back too. I just buy a regular set of dynalite size pads and cut them in half. Now a set of rear pads is really cheap, assuming I do not burn up too many chop saw blades.

For most users, and certainly for those of us doing endurance racing, pad volume is important. You can get the torque bias correct with a small 2 pot caliper but sacrifice pad life because the pad volume end up a lot lower than OEM. The caliper we chose has a pad volume very close to the OEM NA8 and Sport pad but weighs probably 30% as much as the OEM caliper. Another 3lbs or so off each rotor with the two piece and the weight savings are significant. The trick was retaining pad volume while getting piston area right.

Our estimates put the weight loss at over 10 lbs. That is unsprung weight.

That the time needed to swap pads will go from about 3 -1/2 minutes to about to about 45 seconds is well, one lap at T25 :)

We have learned that getting rotor size (torque arm), piston area, pad volume and M/C sizing correct is critical. Get it wrong and no amount of prop valves, funky pad combinations and skill will make up for a crappy pedal and poor modulation. Get it right and you have a rock solid pedal, no fade ever, 20-30 hr pad life and sub one minute pad swaps. Oh and shave 25lbs.

Assuming this new rear kit uses 11" rotors will the fronts require 11.75" rotors or will 11" fronts work? Or does rotor diameter not really matter with an adjustable prop value?

With the new NASA TTA to TT3 classing crap, I'll be looking at getting the 11.75 BBK for the front. Are there any plans for a better package deal with getting this new rear kit with the 11.75 front BBK together? Just wondering if I should wait on getting the fronts. It'll be a couple months anyway, for the new season.

Just want to be sure the noobs know I was joking about the chop saw...

We'll offer a small discount on the package, yes.

ETA? I'm bored and I got money to burn

For those looking for a parking brake on either of the two setups being talked about, you can add one for about a pound and a half per corner by using the wilwood cable pull brake calipers in addition to whatever calipers you have back there. There is a car locally with that setup that was made by apex engineering. I think its the only one that exists, and knowing Lester he wont make another one unless you handed him a very large pile of money.

Go Dyna Pro Radial up front and add a significant amount of pad life to the fronts over the Dyina light setup due to thicker pads.

I think I am actually wearing through my rear pads slightly faster than the fronts with my setup.

But I also concluded the powerlight was the caliper I wanted to use on the rear. The pads are just too small on the singles even though they can be sized right in terms of piston area.

Bob

Wilwood web site is not working for me right now but I stumbled on an image that cought my eye when I just searched willwood powerlite.

The 4 piston wildwood Powerlite caliper with built in Mechanical parking brake.

RallyShop.se - Rätt Pris Direkt | Wilwood Powerlite HB


https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ke-clapper-jpg

^ Thats the one that I've talked about before. They dont sell it here. And I believe that company that sells them actually buys a normal powerlite and modifies it. Or that could be a different one that does the same thing, but I cant read the page since for some reason my work blocks google translate.

I found a quote from Todd at TCE on a Nissan road racing forum.

“These calipers have been around for about 4yrs. They remain under exclusive contract to Rallydesign and are not available to any US dealer. Trust me...I've been down this road many times looking to see what could be done to get some. The only way to do so is to order and import them. The cost of the caliper, the need for a radial mount and the shipping costs make it quite prohibitive for most folks.”

home-made mechanical hand brake
 

Jeez, I never saw that on Wilwood. I ended up making my own. It's not intended for the streets of San Francisco...

Kudos. That is super slick.

Then go to the RallyDesign UK page
Professional Motorsport Parts, Spares & Rally Equipment from Rally Design

I'd worry about the handbrake thingy taking too much radial space.

Some more pictures in this Ebay.co.uk ad.
Also available for vented disks.

Nifty - looks like you have to pull it off to get to swap the inside pad? Still nifty regardless. Props awarded

Thanks. Necessity is a mother, or something like that. :)

No, it's not quick-change, but could be made so fairly easily. It's a first attempt.

I found Fastbrakes is selling a rear kit for a Nissan 240SWX with the powerlite parking brake setup.

Fastbrakes Nissan 240SX 5 bolt rear 12.2 inch 4 piston upgrade

From Rally Design website:

" ... We can despatch goods worldwide (except USA & Canada) ..."

Too bad, 119.50 Pounds Sterling is only about $185.

I could probably get some ... I have relatives in the UK. Too bad that would mean not getting the VAT removed ... would make it close to 100 Pounds if they would ship here. I didn't dig too deep at the website but it's common practice in the UK to include the VAT in the advertised price. For export it comes off.

If you've got an address in Mexico you can have it sent to, you'd be Golden.

Hydraulic Parking Brakes aren't legal on street driven cars where I live and (lever operated) Parking Brake must be functional to pass inspection. Aftermarket driveshaft mounted or diff mounted lever operated parking brakes are available. They need to be mounted somewhere where oil contamination isn't possible.

Fastbrakes is located in Arizona I wonder how they put together a kit with the park brake converted powerlite and are selling it in US and Canada. or if they would just sell the caliper.

Funny the Fastbrake website is blocked from my work like it is a Porn site or something.

Bob

Bump!

No parking brake needed here, looking for a lightweight BBK for the rears. DIY brackets are fine, just don't want to reinvent the wheel if there is already something out there.

Kendall

Did the kits discussed here actually go into production? Can't find anything on Trackspeed or 949 that uses something other than OEM calipers on the rear.

FM is close. I think you can get the non e-brake kit right now.

MIATA BIG BRAKE KIT, Version 4 OUR BEST FOUR WHEEL KIT with Forged Four Piston Calipers for Miata 1994-2002

In stock and updated, apparently.

I only see 2 calipers on that page, not 4.

DOH, you are correct sir. ;)

TSE is working on a kit which I had a little input into. V8R's original 4 wheel kit had way too much rear brake bias. I dropped the rear half from our site and asked Shandelle to do a smaller rear kit just for us. I offered a few suggestions on how to configure it. We'll see how that goes.

If TSE's hits the mark, we'll add it to our webstore. If neither it nor the V8R is what we want, we'll do our own. Based on what Andrew has shared so far, I think TSE's will be the goods. Tricky part is keeping the cost down while still hitting our utility and performance criteria. Doing a fabulous $3000 lightweight rear brake is easy. Doing a functional <=$1000 rear kit is proving surprisingly difficult.

We're 4-6 weeks out. Wilwood Powerlite 4-pot caliper on a CNC'd bracket, custom rear rotor hat, and custom rear 10" rotor. Bias is a bit more rear than a 1.8L caliper on a 10.9" rotor. I have one kit in testing that's using production-spec brackets and an early prototype rotor hat. The production hats will be 7075-T6 and 40% lighter.

We'll play with a parking brake option at some point. Design goal #1 with this kit was to remove as much weight as possible from the rear brakes, so the parking brake got chucked immediately.

Pricing TBA, figure on it being well under $1k. Buy it with an 11.75" front kit and we'll give you a better deal. We're taking what we learned from this project and designing our own front rotor hats, so expect our front 11.75" kits to drop in price and weight as well.

Replacement rear rotor required or optional?

Optional, but strongly recommended. Our rotors weigh 20% less than a factory rotor, rings will be <$100/ea to replace, and the aluminum hats transfer heat better which means the rear brakes will run cooler. Lots of benefits for only a few hundred bucks of initial outlay. If you're serious enough to swap the rear caliper, you should be running a 2-piece rotor.

We'll offer the rotor separately for racers who aren't allowed to change the rear brake caliper (PTC/D/E and a few autocross classes).

Understood. My car is going to be ~1450 lbs, so the caliper is the lower hanging fruit for me. I don't think heat will be a concern with the app. Saving ~3lbs or whatever off the caliper/bracket should be pretty huge, and OE rear brakes with intact parking brake kind of suck.

I want that rear rotor. Will it fit the front as well? I've recently be talking with fast brakes to see if he can figure out something, but if this works its what I want.

Solid rear, vented front, so sadly it won't fit the front. If the hat offset worked for a vented front rotor, I could see doing it, but I doubt that will be the case.

At least it gets me half the car.

Is that from the slightly larger rotor or piston volume? Will piston volume be less than rear sport brakes?

Love the pedal with the 1.8 rear calipers over the sports. That is why I am asking.

Does the caliper have a decent selection of pads? I am LOVING the Cobalts at this point and would prefer to stay with that compound.

Piston volume. Rotor is smaller than a sport rotor to hit our bias target. Expect the pedal feel to improve regardless, since you're getting rid of a flexy single-pot caliper.

Can't comment on pad availability for Cobalts, as I don't sell them.

Thanks for the update gentlemen.

I'm looking at a brake kit in a serious way... my only reticence has been the large jump in rotor costs.

I'll stay tuned.

I didn't know this discussion was going on. The FM kit is being announced in the next day or two. We'll have two options.

One, a Powerlite setup that fits over stock rotors. You can use either the 10.9" Sport (compatible with pretty much all the four-wheel BBKs on the market) or the 9.9" 1994-02 rotors. No spike in rotor costs, you can use factory parts. Billet mount, blah blah blah. Available NOW, everything is in stock. $495 for calipers, pads (Wilwood E), lines and brackets.

Two, the same Powerlite setup with a parking brake. It's the same caliper sold by Rallydesign, we got permission to use it. We've been working on these for a while and I actually had them on my car at the MRLS event. I'll admit that even when it's working well, the brake is enough to hold the car on a mild slope and not much else. Not for the drifters. But it's good enough to satisfy SCCA regulations, so you can be legal. We're waiting for more calipers (the sets we have are pre-sold), but they should be shipping in a month or two. $595 for calipers, pads (Wilwood E), brackets, lines and cables.

As far as I know, every pad manufacturer (other than Hawk) can provide pads for the Powerlite.

In for e-brake powerlite groupbuy

We'll do a group buy for $595, how's that for a deal?

They're now up on the site:
The Track version (no parking brake) is $495. That includes the calipers, pads (Wilwood E compound), lines and brackets. We have these in stock and ready to ship.

The Street version (with parking brake) is $595. That includes the calipers, pads (Wilwood E compound), lines, brackets and custom cables. We're waiting for some more calipers on this one, it will likely be 6 weeks before they're able to ship.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1373573402
https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1373573402

How is this possible? Different mounting brackets?

I'm guessing you would pair these with a BBK, not the LBBK. Right?

FM is doing different mounting brackets, but since these are radial mount calipers it would be just as easy to make a mount for the 10" disks and use a spacer between the mount and the caliper for the 10.6" disks, or shit another spacer for 10.75" or 11" wilwoods (assuming the hat offset for miatas is the same front and back). But you'd need some MONSTER front brakes to end up with the correct balance with the bigger choices.

I think the killer set for anyone that requires an e-brake would be the FM setup with TSE rotors. Either the 9.9" block will fit, or it'll fit with a piece of 0.050 shim stock in between the caliper and the mount.

Yes, we have different brackets for each rotor. Although theoretically you could add 1/2" spacers to the 10" version and use the 11" rotor - it's a radial mount caliper. Not my preferred way to do things given the choice, but it's a legitimate option.

I have mine paired with a LBBK for street use. Nice and light and compact. On the Targa Miata, I've got the 11" BBK with four-piston Dynalites in the front and the Powerlites in the back.

In other words, pair them with whatever front brakes you need, the fronts are still going to do the bulk of the work.

Note that the offset is not the same front and back. More importantly, the rear rotors are non-vented. I'm not sure we can get the parking brake calipers in a wide size for a vented rotor. We've designed brackets for front rotors on the back, but haven't put them into production because we're not convinced that there's a need for a vented rotor on the rear.

Are you going to offer different piston sizes? My calcs put a 10" front and rear setup as wanting the 1 3/8" piston in the front and the 1" in back. I havent run the numbers for different sized rotors in the front, but it's going to either require a bigger bore caliper or bigger diameter rotor to keep the balance, even with a bias valve.

Surprise surprise, those are the exact piston sizes we use. Check your factory service manual and you'll discover they're a pretty close match to stock. I would recommend similar rotor sizes front and rear. 11" front means 11" rear, 10" front means 10" rear - roughly.

Remember that if you start to monkey with piston sizes, you're also getting into effects with your hydraulic system.

Weight savings: 3.15 lbs per corner for the track version when compared to a 1994-02 stock rear caliper. That was weighed without pads, I'm assuming they'll be pretty similar. The parking brake version is ever so slightly heavier, so let's call it 3.0.