Disc Brake Conversion

[ultrastang]

A fixed caliper is superior in performance to and equivalent floating caliper, if only by a little bit. Fixed calipers are more expensive then the floating calipers, they require more maint. and over time can require recentering on the rotor. I imagine all of these together make a good argument for most manufacturers to use a floating design. You will notice on the true high end cars that they don't use floating calipers, they don't need to save cost on production and they expect people to be ok with the added maint. cost down the line.

After doing some research, I found that the Dodge Viper utilizes gigantic brakes with massive fixed calipers, both front and rear.

The'03 SN95 SVT Cobra was the top-of-the-line performance offering from Ford with an MSRP of $37,845.00 dollars. The Viper would definitely fall under the definition of a "true high end car" with its long list of exotic parts and highly expensive fixed-caliper braking system and an MSRP price tag of $79,995.00 dollars.

One would expect the Viper to totally blow the ['Terminator'] Cobra away in a braking contest, but the facts will soon be revealed that proves otherwise.

Statistics: The Cobra and Viper are within the same weight classification. The '03 Cobra weighs 3,255 lbs. An '03 Viper weighs 3,380 lbs., a difference of only 125 lbs. The Viper costs $42,150.00 dollars more than the SVT Cobra. In fact, you could have bought two brand new '03 Cobras for the price of one '03 Viper and still had $4,305.00 dollars left over.

The '03 Cobra had twin 40mm pistons in a ['lowly budget'] floating front caliper and a single 38mm piston in the ['lowly budget'] rear floating caliper. Front rotors for the Cobra were 13". Cobra rear rotors were 11-5/8". The Viper had massive, dual-opposing 44/40 fixed front calipers with very large dual-opposing 42/38 fixed rear calipers with enormous 14" rotors all the way around.

In a Car & Driver stopping shootout, the '03 Viper went from 60MPH down to zero in 129 feet. The '03 Cobra with its smaller 'budgetary' floating caliper brakes stopped the car in 121 feet --a full 8 feet sooner than the more-than-twice-as-expensive, "better" fixed caliper braked Viper.

One would expect the Viper's highly expensive and 'better' fixed caliper brake system to be no contest against a budget, floating caliper brake system of a Cobra, but the facts show the Cobra's floating caliper brake system lived up to the 'Terminator' name against a vehicle with supposedly 'superior brakes' --and at a cost of less than twice that of the Viper.

 

[Rusty67]

Tires are actually a major factor as they are in reality what actually stops the car. A different tire will change the braking charactersitics of a car. I have no idea what tires the Viper used but I think the Cobra came with the same Eagle ZR1 tires other Mustangs did.

Also, the Viper is a Dodge.... just because its got nice big brakes doesn't mean the engineers setup the brake system properly. Maybe they didn't use the right size MC bore to get the brakes to clamp hard enough. Maybe the pads they used weren't a good material. There are a lot of factors that change how well a brake system works above and beyond caliper/rotor size.

This single example doesn't prove which system is better.

You want to know what the best is ? Look at F1. They used fixed calipers.

 

[ultrastang]

Tires are actually a major factor as they are in reality what actually stops the car. A different tire will change the braking charactersitics of a car. I have no idea what tires the Viper used but I think the Cobra came with the same Eagle ZR1 tires other Mustangs did.

Cobras came with Goodyear Eagle F1, 275/40ZR-17 tires. The Viper had P275/35ZR18 front and much larger rear P345/30ZR19 Michelin zero pressure (ZP) tires

Also, the Viper is a Dodge....

Dodge is incapable of building a performance vehicle that not only goes but stops too?

just because its got nice big brakes doesn't mean the engineers setup the brake system properly.

The Viper went from concept in 1989 to production by early 1990. By the time the '03 Cobra & '03 Viper went head to head in a stopping contest by Car & Driver, the Viper had been in production for 13 years. I think the Dodge engineers would have had plenty of time to 'sort out the bugs' , if it had had any to start with, by this point. If a magazine review is going to be done on an auto manufacturer's vehicle, they aren't going to send out a car that hasn't been thoroughly gone over to make sure everything is working correctly, or otherwise risk getting a very bad review for the whole public to witness.

Maybe they didn't use the right size MC bore to get the brakes to clamp hard enough. Maybe the pads they used weren't a good material. There are a lot of factors that change how well a brake system works above and beyond caliper/rotor size.

So, it's safe to assume that Dodge engineers in general, and Dodge brake engineers in particular can be tasked with building a very expensive car with very expensive, 'superior' brake components but they don't have the ability to choose the right master cylinder, tire compounds or the right compound to use in their brake pads, or have the ability to make the components work together as they should? --20 years of production now and they still haven't gotten it right. Wow, that's amazing (???)

This single example doesn't prove which system is better.

You are right. What it did prove though, was that a vehicle more than twice the cost of the Cobra with a 'superior' brake setup still got owned by a much smaller brake system with floating calipers. The fact is the Cobra out performed the Viper in this particular contest.

You want to know what the best is ? Look at F1. They used fixed calipers.

F1's have great brakes and performance. The difference between an F1 and a Cobra or Viper is that an F1 is purely a race car and not a factory production model. The Cobra and Viper are production vehicles --one made by Ford the other by Dodge. The Dodge production vehicle has the 'superior' brake system. The Ford has the despised floating calipers, but in the end the fact remains the Cobra was the victor of this contest.

I guess if you get a bunch of Dodge engineers together, give them a big budget to work with and allow them to put together a very expensive vehicle with a lot of really expensive parts, and give them 'superior' fixed-caliper brakes, they still just simply can't make it work.

--By contrast, it seems the Ford engineers can be given the task of working to build a car more than twice the reduction in cost of a Viper, give them sub-standard floating caliper brake systems and they can work miracles unseen by any other brake engineers in the world when going up against an exotic, fixed-caliper braking system.

 

[Rusty67]

Man.... Vegas + Batchlor party = one rough weeekend......

My statements were more of a poke a Doge and were kind of a joke. Sarcasm doesn't come across well when typed.

My point was that any 2 cars being compaired aren't a valid way to judge which system was better or superior.




I think those calipers are PBR calipers ? The Corvette used the same design for the C5 I believe. Those front calipers work great when nothing brakes and even function well enough with small problems. I have had lots of small issues with this design on both my dad's and my daily driver. He has a Bullitt and I have a Mach 1. I've had the c-clip on the retaining pin brake, luckly nothing happened at high speed, this could have been catstrophic. I've had the spring clips become detached from the pad causing strang braking behavior. I've also had pads where the backing wore down causing the caliper to float in the bracket because the pad backing is what the caliper actually floats back and forth on. This didn't cause wierd braking behavior as I would have expected but it did cause an annoying clunking sound when ever we hit a bump. The up side on this caliper is no slide pins which keep the caliper clamping at better angles and the ease of service. They are provably the single easiest caliper I've ever done.

The Cobra calipers are decent but they have thier issues and need to be inspected for problems just like any other brake system. All calipers types have their own issues you need to be aware of and look to correct. Unless you want to absolutely maximize your braking power its just what you want to deal with.

 

[ultrastang]

Man.... Vegas + Batchlor party = one rough weeekend......

My statements were more of a poke a Doge and were kind of a joke. Sarcasm doesn't come across well when typed.

My point was that any 2 cars being compaired aren't a valid way to judge which system was better or superior.




I think those calipers are PBR calipers ? The Corvette used the same design for the C5 I believe. Those front calipers work great when nothing brakes and even function well enough with small problems. I have had lots of small issues with this design on both my dad's and my daily driver. He has a Bullitt and I have a Mach 1. I've had the c-clip on the retaining pin brake, luckly nothing happened at high speed, this could have been catstrophic. I've had the spring clips become detached from the pad causing strang braking behavior. I've also had pads where the backing wore down causing the caliper to float in the bracket because the pad backing is what the caliper actually floats back and forth on. This didn't cause wierd braking behavior as I would have expected but it did cause an annoying clunking sound when ever we hit a bump. The up side on this caliper is no slide pins which keep the caliper clamping at better angles and the ease of service. They are provably the single easiest caliper I've ever done.

The Cobra calipers are decent but they have thier issues and need to be inspected for problems just like any other brake system. All calipers types have their own issues you need to be aware of and look to correct. Unless you want to absolutely maximize your braking power its just what you want to deal with.

It's not a major issue of conflict. We are just having a grown folks conversation.

We also have something in common. I also own a Mach 1 --an Azure Blue '03 model. I've owned it since new and it has been my daily mode of transportation for the past 7 years now. I've replaced the pads on it and done all the other regular maintenance things, --change the oil, oil filter, air filter, etc., but the only 'major' thing I've ever had to do to it was replace the OEM battery after if finally lost a cell. Other than this, this Mach 1 has been dead reliable and the brakes work really great.

A little over a year ago, I took it to Centerville Raceway in northwestern Arkansas to race at a 1000' strip there. I had never run it on the track before and had no idea what it would do. Their cut-off for having to wear a helmet is 11.25 or faster. I ran way under this and got a warning from the guy at the time slip booth.

At the time, my Mach 1 had 100,000 miles on the odometer. I ran against a buddy's '98 Cobra. You will see his red '98 Cobra dissapear in my rear view mirror once I hit second [in the video link below].

If I had taken off a little softer and not shifted so hard between 1st to 2nd, and not shocked the rear tires both times, I probably could have gotten into the high 10's and close to 100 MPH, but I was very pleased with this run considering I had no clue it was going to run this good of a E.T.

YouTube - '03 Mach 1 vs '98 Cobra