Building a Track Car – BIG brakes

With the rear suspension completed (minus the V-Maxx coil-overs) it was time to get the rear half of the big brake kit on that we had purchased from GoMiata.  The kit is developed by Good-Win Racing and had gone through a recent upgrade.  It sports 10.5 inch rear rotors with the stock rear calipers relocated by aluminum brackets.  It comes with Porterfield R4S pads for the rear.

The new brackets are beauties.  But don’t let the good looks fool you, these are high quality pieces.  Anodized aluminum with perfect fit.  The stock caliper bracket bolts secure it to the hub and special allen head bolts mount the stock caliper bracket to the new adapter. 

Once I had that in place I was ready to insert the Porterfield pads and rotate the remanufactured calipers in place.  One problem though.  The stamped metal sliders that came with the reman calipers interfered with the new rotors and would not mount in place.

I asked Brian Goodwin (of Good-Win Racing) if he had any ideas.  We reviewed any potential problem areas, but nothing really made sense.  Then I went on to Auto Zones’ web site to look at what a small parts kit looked like for the rear calipers.  Sure enough, the wrong metal parts had been packed with the reman calipers.  A quick trip to Auto Zone and I had the proper ones that fit just as they should have in the first place.

With the new mounts the calipers are rotated about a couple of inches from their original orientation.  I felt that this put too much tension on the parking brake cables so I dismounted them from the brackets that connect them to the car body and found some rubber tubing that fit around the brake cables so that the clamps could be moved along the cable’s length and remounted to the chassis.  This resulted in the tension being relieved and a nice looking installation.

The new rotors are from DBA out of Australia and come with beautiful aluminum hats that really reduce the weight of the brake rotors.  DBA also puts paint stripes on the edge of the rotors that will change color as certain temperatures are reached.  This allows you to determine just how hot your brake rotors have become.  It’s a very nice feature.

Of course the kit comes with replacement brake lines.  The new ones are braided stainless steel and look great and fit perfectly.

What a fantastic upgrade.  I can’t wait for the front suspension to be rebuilt so the front brakes can be put on.

While I was under that part of the car it was the perfect time to change out the fuel filter. 

The filter is covered by a plastic shield held on by about six plastic scrivets (screw – rivets).  Once revealed it ws pretty clear that this filter had never been changed in the 150,00 miles that this car had traveled.

I used a set of clamps to make sure that disconnecting the fuel lines wouldn’t result in gasoline draining everywhere.

The new filter came with a new bracket, which was very fortunate as the old one was a corroded mess.

When I drained the old filter into a catch can it was easy to see all the crud that had been captured, but it probably clogged the old filter and reduced the fuel flow.

 It was time to think about installing that Hard Dog roll bar.