Project little reds

Today I started project little red. This is a brake upgrade for Sparky.

I have been researching brake options for the past six months. I had a few objectives -

- Improve fade resistance. I toasted my brakes on my last track visit and wanted more capacity. This thread discusses that ordeal http://www.pelicanparts.com/ultimate/Forum3/HTML/010796.html

- Suitable for track and street. I don't want to change pads, or have cold brakes that don't work.

- Improve appearance. Sparky sees daily street duty and I do care about the look.

- Fit my 15 track wheels. Love the gear ratio advantage I get with these.

- Keep rotating weight to a minimum. I don't want to sacrifice acceleration for braking.

- Keep $ to no more than necessary. Call me a cheap bastard. Proud of it too.

I evaluated most of the options out there. Big reds, turbos, boxter calipers on carrera rotors, 944 turbo.....

None of those options will stop Sparky faster than the Carrera brakes that are not overheated. Don't believe me? Search the archives and do your own research.

When I meshed these options against my list of objectives they all fell short. So I am creating little reds.

What is a little red? - Here is the list:

- Carrera calipers
- Drilled rotors
- Ferado pads
- Caliper rebuild
- Red Caliper paint
- Cool air ducting front and rear
- ATE super blue fluid

I think this will meet all my objectives. Is the best at any one objective? No. But life is full of compromises and this seems like a good all around solution.

I will be documenting my progress. I won't detail all the steps as some great tech articles allready appear on Pelican. Just some specifics. If you need a primer on caliper rebuild, this one is great:
www.pelicanparts.com/techarticles/911_caliper_rebuild/911_caliper_rebuild.htm

Day 1 is complete.

Here is a shot of my rear pads after removal:



On my last track outing, I really toasted the brakes. The pads wore down a great deal and I could see visible smoke coming from my rear brakes. You can see in the picture above that edges of the pad were chunky off. These pads just weren't up to the task.

In this next shot you can see a profile of the rear pads vs. the new Ferodo.



Notice that the old pad was worn at an angle. When I rebuilt the calipers I noticed some of the pistons were rotated in the bores. I think this caused the angled wear pattern. The rears are worn more than the front pads. I don't know what type of pads where in there.

The following shot shows how to pop out the caliper pistons if your wife didn't by you an air compressor for your last birthday.

The trick is to buy an extra section of brake hard line, screw it into the caliper, then connect a bike pump to the other side. Use the type of bike pump with the clamp connector. Works great.

The following shot shows the worst of the calipers seals:



You can see this one was completely toast. Most of the others were pretty good. Sparky has about 85k miles and probably has the original seals on the calipers.

After pulling the calipers, I set about to clean them. First I used a brake dust specific wheel cleaner, followed by a pressure washer to get the rough stuff off. Then I used a can of brake parts cleaner to get the last of it off.

Even after all that they still don't look like new calipers. Here they are after cleaning, taping, and ready for painting:


I used 500 degree engine enamal to paint them. I chose to paint only the visible surfaces since the paint tends to reduce heat dissipation capacity. I chose red. Why? Because after Brembo Big Reds, there really is no other option for a 911.

Since these are wimpy Carrera calipers, they are little reds.

After painting, It is a good idea to bake on the paint. This hardens the paint and also boils off any water that may have been introduced in the cleaning process.

Here they are:


I baked for 1 hour at 275 degrees. This works great, but the smart money does this when the wife is not home. What she doesn't know wont hurt her.

That is it for today. The calipers and rotors are ready to go in.

Tomorrow will be the duct work for cooling. Oh....did I mention..... I will be fabricating my own cooling kit? Clark Griswald is a hard core DIYer, thinks he can do things better than the pros, and is not about to pop for $300 per axle for the cool brakes stuff. Stay tuned.

As a parting shot, here is the new floor jack I just picked up. Unlike my old lame ass jack that only went to 14 inches, this one cranks up to 20 inches. Damn does that make life easy. Sweeeeet. Gets the car up so it is easy to reach. For a lousy $65 go out and get one, don't even think about.



And yes that is a cooler full of beer. Arrr, arrr, arr.


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Chuck Moreland '86 Cab - "Sparky", '77 Targa - "Sweet Pea"

[This message has been edited by Clark Griswald (edited 08-11-2001).]

[This message has been edited by Clark Griswald (edited 08-13-2001).]

Ya know, Chuck, those calipers looked so yummy on the grill....why don't you just eat them?


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'81 SC Coupe (aka: "Blue Bomber")
Canada West Region PCA
The Blue Bomber's Website

Chuck, it looks like a great job.
I have an 85 carrera with the same setup you are going to- except I use AP600 fluid and usually pagid orange pads. I still cook the heck out of the brakes- the dust shields can get baked off in as little as one weekend at the track-especially running the short course of the sebring track. Maybe it is my brake foot, but I have had other drivers ride with me to watch my braking and they can't see that I am overbraking or anything.
Do you have a picture of how you ducted the rear brakes? I am using the AJ kit on the front.
I have tried red engine paint, as well as the expensive Brem's paint- mine turns dark red/black after a track weekend. You can repaint the calipers quickly on the car- use aluminum foil for masking-works great and you can wedge it into all the little corners.
Good luck, but watch even these calipers on the track.
Gary

Gary,

Curious did you notice an improvement with the cool kit? Aren't Pagid orange full race pads?

I haven't done the duct work yet, that is today's project. I've got it scoped out though. I'm tackling the front first.

I will post pictures.

Chuck, I know what you mean about those cheap floor jacks usually from China!! I bought one a couple of years ago..didn't use it much, now it leaks oil and the wheels keep coming off! I'm ready to buy one of the "big" boys very soon. Good luck on your project....J.R.

I have a 72 911. I have a rs 's' spoiler that has the round holes for brake cooling. I have installed heater hoses and pointed the duct work towards the calipers.Not very efficient Where can I get a pre-made peice of sheet metal that mounts behind the caliper so I can hook up the other end of my heater hose. I once made one for an 510 that i use to x. I have also seen kits that come with the whole 9 yards. Just want the piece that mounts behind capiper''.
thanks

The front cooling ducts helped some- but not enough. I am presently looking and saving for the 930 brake upgrade- I want to be able to stay with my 16" wheels.
I really like the pagid orange pads. They do real well on the track, but function OK as a street pad- at least in my car. With the stock size pads I get NO brake squeal, and very little dust. These same pads, on the 930's seem to squeal a lot- maybe because of the size difference?? They seem to stop fine cold.

Originally posted by JR911:
Chuck, I know what you mean about those cheap floor jacks usually from China!! I bought one a couple of years ago..didn't use it much, now it leaks oil and the wheels keep coming off! I'm ready to buy one of the "big" boys very soon. Good luck on your project....J.R.

On the topic of floor jacks. The best jack I have ever used is called a Linclon. Its built in the USA and these things are very solid. They go up, I believe, 22 inches and They seem to last. We have about 8 of them at the place I work at, I think they have been there for at least 3 years without any problems. I saw one at wallymart the other day, price was like $150-$200, but you get what you pay for.

---

Porsche, through and through
Tim
'83 944

My Photo Page
My Home Page

Hey! I did the same thing with my calipers-but I sandblasted them first, then had them powdercoated in the glossiest red available. After installing rebuild kits and doing a little touching up with flat black high heat paint on the bolts, they look (and will hopefully perform) better than new-Speedbleeder valves and new mounting bolts complete the upgrade.

(Damn, I've really gotta get a digital camera-wish I had some pics to share-they really look great).

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Clay McGuill '66 912, '97 Jeep Cherokee www.geocities.com/the912guy

Day two is done. Today I re-assembled the calipers, then crafted the hub ducts for the front.

The re-assembly went great, until I tried to put on the outer seals on the rear. Damn those suckers fit tight. Nothing worked to get them on, I suspected I had the wrong units. But a cross check with the seals removed proved the same.

Finally I got them go on by pressing with my fingertips, very hard. The only way I can describe this is you press as hard as you can, until you experience severe pain in the fingertips.... you are now pressing almost hard enough. Squeeze just a little harder and longer and they pop on. Even now as I type, my fingertips hurt.

That ordeal caused a late start on the ducting fabrication. I did the fronts first and have only crafted the parts that connect to the hub. But this is hard part.

The first one took a long time to craft. I made mockups out of cardboard to decide how to cut and shape the metal. But once I had that done, the second one was easy and took maybe 30 minutes start to finish.

The goal here is to drive cool ducted air into the hub of the rotor. That way the cool air will vent out through the internal veins of the vented rotors. My desire was to force as much air as possible through the internal veins, and secondly to get any spill over to flow over the surface of the rotor on the backside.

My approach is to use the existing brake shield as a startign point. If you look at it closely, it has a ridge that runs around the eye of rotor, and a pocket in the eye. It was almost perfectly suited to the task.

Problem is that it has a bunch of holes cut in the eye to let air in. For my purposes these holes need to blocked off.

I also needed a way to attach the air hose. So I crafted some plates that bolted over the holes to block them, and also has a good size fitting to accept the air hose.

Here is a picture of the first plate completed along side of the second one just after welding.


I made these from galvanized steel and welded the hose mounts to the flat sheet. Then cut the flat sheet to shape.

Here is one of the plates ready to mount.


You are seeing the backside, the rectangular stub is for attaching the air hose.

Here it is mounted in position. You can start to see how this just might work.


And the profile, you can see just how that hose will mount.


This backside shot shows one the biggest challenges. There isn't a whole lotta room for the air hose mounting stub. That strut gets in the way. Leaving room for the strut limits the size of the hose you can use.



Now finally we add the brake shield.



Now it all starts to make sense. You can see that the plate blocks all the holes in the brake shield, except for the big one that will mount the air hose. Notice that I trimmed away material from the brake shield to open up the air hose mount.

You can see the ridge I mentioned that fits around the air veins. Most of the air coming through that hose is going into those air veins. The spill over gets directed over the surface of the rotor by the brake shield. The front section is blocked by the caliper, although some air will flow out over the caliper too.

You can see why the rectanguler air hose mount is angled. This let me squeeze the largest air hose opening inside of the hub eye. Ideally it would have been a bit wedge shaped. But I didn't leave much given the constraints established by the strut and steering knuckle.

The following shot shows how the plate seals against the brake shield. This is the back side of the assembly, this facing into the car. In addition to the 3 large mounting bolts, I added some self tapping screws and put a bead of RTV sealant between them to maintain the air seal.



Of course you always learn ways to do it better. If I did it again I would have cut the air hose mounts in a slight wedge, and worked harder at sealing the area by the caliper.

You can also see the drilled rotor in the background. Notice the eye of the rotor and intake to the cooling veins. That is were we a driving this air. And the brake shield ridge fits right around that to contain most of that air in the hub.

I am pleased with how these front plates came out. Even without those incremental improvements these should be very effective. Getting a good solid flow of cold air to that hub eye will now really cool things down.

Next step is to fabricate plates for the rear. After that I set up the air hoses and intake ducts.

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Chuck Moreland '86 Cab - "Sparky", '77 Targa - "Sweet Pea"

[This message has been edited by Clark Griswald (edited 08-12-2001).]

What a fantastic presentation.

I can't wait to see more!!



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David

1988 911 Carrera Coupe
Leonoff Net

Very nice Clark, I am watching too, keep up the great work.

Shawn

Where's the final picture?

If anyone out there plans on doing this, I have a set of backing plates from the OG Racing kit that I'll sell pretty cheap. I had to switch to the Turbo plates when I redid my brakes. You can save yourself some of the fabricating time that Clark had to put into the project.


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Jack Olsen
My Rennlist page • My Pelican Gallery page • My Porsche Owners Gallery page

Will those backing plates work on a 72 with stock brakes? Do they have round openings?
Thanks

Nice job!! Another vote here for Pagid Orange.. PF93s ate my rotors.

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Alan
83 SC

Clark,

Great work and keep us updated on the progress. Pls show some pics of where you are ducting the air to the brakes from and the routing.

You are giving lots of us ideas for our "winter projects!"

Joe

Time for the next instalment. Had to go to work this past week so nothing new happened, until today.

Today's little challenge was fabrication of hub ducting for the rears. Not nearly so simple as the fronts. Here is a before picture that shows what we are working with:



Just like upfront, we have a nice brake shield which covers the rotor. Unlike upfront the brake shield does not have a "pocket" to distribute the cool air around the disk.

I could have plumbed the air hose into this shield as it it, but it would not have spread around the rotor very well. Consequently the cooling benefit would have been poor.

The problem is compounded by the massive banana arm that fills the hub. No chance to duct any air in the center like we did up front.

So my plan was to use to shield to contain the cool air against the rotor (and specifically the eye of the rotor) and to create external air channels to distribute the cool around to cover about 2/3 of the rotor. The remaining 1/3 is blocked by the caliper. Oh well.

Here is a shot of brake shield out of the car.



This shiel sits about 3/8 inch off the rotor, so we can't expect too much air to move between them. The holes in the shield sit over the intakes to the rotor internal veins.

Along side the shield, you can see a peice of galvanized steel that will be used to move the air around the outside of the rotor.

I formed little air channels by hand. These are to be welded to the brake shield over the holes. The air channels will carry the cool air around the rotor, the existing holes in the shield will let the air bleed in right over the internal vein intakes. Overflow will directed over the inner surface of the rotor.

Here is a picture of the air channels, starting a folded sheet, then cut up and formed.



Next post will show how these puppies go together. Can't fit all the pictures in a single post (limit is 8).

Did lots of cutting, bending, fitting, rebending, recutting, refitting... until it looked right. Then fired up the torch to start welding.

Here are a few shots of what it looked like immediately after welding up:



You can see how the air channels will distribute the cool air around the brake shield surface.

This shots shows some detail on the joints used to form the metal:



This underside shot shows that the air channels distribute the air right to the existing holes, which sit on top of the internal rotor vein intakes. Perfect.



After welding, the joints looked pretty tight. But to really seal things up I used a compound the is intended to seal rain gutters. This stuff is made to make water tight seals on galvanized steel. Works for me.



What we end up with is basically a horsheshoe shaped air distribution channel.



The intake is pretty beefy and will carry lots of cool air. This is were the hose will fit:



Here is a shot, off the car, that gives an illustration of how this fits over the rotor. You can see the internal vein intakes, and the air channel distributes the air right to them. Spillover will be held against the rotor inner surface helping to dissipate heat.



Anyone need me to wip up a set of SSIs, just lemme know.

This took all day, and I only have one done. The next one will of course go faster. But hey, if I wasn't doing this I would have spent all day doing something else on the car. So be it.

[This message has been edited by Clark Griswald (edited 08-18-2001).]

Good job Clark. I wish you were my neighbor.

Just curious, mig, stick or torch welding?

Also, In the past I read somewhere that welding galvanized metal creates a dangerous gas. And a respirator is required. Can anyone expound on this?

Oxygen Propane torch. Braze welding with bronze rod.