Racing Pads for 5.25 Wilwood Clone Calipers

[FJCamper]

Porterfield Racing Brake Pads for the Wilwood Clone Calipers

California Import Parts sells an aluminum copy of the four-piston 5.24 bolt-spacing Wilwood Dynalite, and street pads for them.

http://www2.cip1.com/ProductDetails.asp ... D615%2D510

taking these pads:

http://www2.cip1.com/ProductDetails.asp ... D616%2D510

And, as you can see, VWubengineering in Canada sells a custom made bracket for this caliper that allows it to
fit drum brake Super Beetles and drum brake (ball-joint) Bug spindles.

Consider this an alternative to the popular Porsche 944 brake swap. The four-piston Wilwood clone caliper is a
big brake upgrade over the usual ATE-VARGA calipers in the disk brake conversion kits.

A cautionary pause here -- bigger brakes are not automatically better, because both street and race braking
must be balanced to the speeds and weight distribution of the car. You can very easily find yourself with erattic
braking, such as unpredictable front or rear lockup.

Our application for the Wilwood clones is on the 1973 Blitzwagen Super Beetle, now being prepped for Sebring after
an altercation with the scenery at Daytona last May. That means we need racing pads.

Our pad supplier of choice is Porterfield. They designate the clone pads as "4-inch stockcar" and offer them
in a variety of compounds.

http://tinyurl.com/mn27rvw

Our track experience with the Porterfield R4 series pads (the R4-S a softer street and light track compound) is that in the
standard ATE/VARGA 2-pin pad size, we could run two or more 12-hour endurance races just on R4-S. That's because our VW's
are light, and we are light on the brakes. After all, brakes only slow you down.

We have a set of R4-S compound pads on the way, and will post again here when we fit the Wilwood clones to the
Blitzwagen. What we expect from this modification is improved braking down from the 125-90MPH range. Currently,
our ATE/VARGAS are very efficient at 90MPH or less, but take a moment to get fully in conrol above that speed.

FJC

[Steve Arndt]

When will you have test results?

[FJCamper]

Hi Steve,

We have a private track day on 16 August at www.tgprace.com. We should be able to at least get enough testing in to know if these clones go with us to Sebring in September. We'll be trying both the "stock" pads and the Porterfield R4-S pads. Oddly enough, they both cost about the same.

The rear brakes will be ATE/VARGA. I use the slash because we have a mix of these calipers, and for us there has been no noticible difference in performance from them.

FJC

[JWP]

Porterfield pads are great choice especially in the R4 compound. I used to run with a guy who had them in his 240z and could quite a bit of time on them, they were mounted in a toyota pickup caliper.

Another option that a lot of my racing friends use are Carbotech and Hawk. The former I know will make you custom pads if you have a "backing plate" which is the steel plate the friction material is adhered to.

Good luck, looking forward to the results, I'll am looking forward to testing mine out as well....some day

[ambrynmc]

What diameter size are the caliper pistons on those "clones"? Thanks

[FJCamper]

Hi Ambrynmc,

I get 44mm on my little stainess steel pocket rule.

And, importantly, the clones have no dust boots around the pistons.

FJC

[Steve Arndt]

FYI
Wilwood have OR don't have piston dust boots for street use. It depends on which calipers you buy.

[FJCamper]

Hi Steve,

I am new to Wilwood calipers, actually new to most any caliper not issued by Porsche or VW.

My understanding of the Wilwood boot/no-boot vaiants is the pure-race use calipers have no boots to melt, and street use calipers need boots to keep mud, pebbles, etc., out from around the pistons.

My presumption is the clone calipers omit the dust boots to save money.

FJC

[buildabiggerboxer]

They look a good move FJ, so many dubs are overbraked with 6 pot Porsche calipers designed for a 1500kg car, i cant see how they generate any core heat for the wheels and tyres. another reason the seals are not used on race calipers is piston/pad retraction by the seals is minimised. im on Tarox brakes with no seals, i try to pull the pads and clean the stainless pistons before retracting them over the closed season and ive had no problems yet. good info ta.

[fabo]

Any updates on how the four pots are performing

[FJCamper]

Gentlemen,

We have the clones mounted but can't race-test them until Feb 1st, 2014. We have a LeMons 14-hour enduro coming up at Barber, just outside Birmingham, Alabama.

FJC

[Steve Arndt]

Lets see some pics!

[Tony Z]

any progress?

[FJCamper]

Hi Tony,

As you may have read in the other posts on this (about mounting the calipers) our 19mm and then 20.6mm master cylinder's both failed to provide enough volume to make the big Wilwood clones work. The 19mm got us half a pedal. The 20.6mm about 3/4 pedal. Brake pressure gauge showed 600 psi at best. With the ATE/VARGA calipers back on, we got a great pedal and 1500 psi.

In Jaws, they needed a bigger boat. We need a bigger master cylinder.

We will follow up on this with a 1-inch master cylinder on another car. We can't experiement too much (or take the downtime) on our LeMons/Chump Blitzwagen. It has to be ready to race, each race, safely.

FJC

[Tony Z]

Cheers for that FJC
I didnt see the other posts on this topic.

Good luck with the upcoming season