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Tue Jun 11, 2024 4:28 am

Could you please fill us in on your disc brake conversion parts please Brent? Disc choice, master cylinder choice and how the brake balance has turned out?

We were going to go to the Calgary event but the weather was not that warm for a 3.5 hour Buggy ride. Turns out we should have gone anyway as the Buggies seem to have been grossly under represented.

Any thoughts of going to Findlater?

Wed Jun 12, 2024 9:12 am

Brake kit is from (Turn key kit)
https://www.coolrydes.com/coolstop-brakes.html

For the most part I'm happy but lots didn't go as expected. I bought 1.75" narrowed trailing arms to get my wheels tucked in. Offset on brake system was said to add .375". My wheels are exactly where they were with the drum brakes. I was told its because I have a modified car.... But when you take factory parts off, bolt new on with the same rims you should see a difference. I did not. This tells me the disc set brought everything out about 1.5 to 1.75" not .375"
The rotors are off a 911 Porsche, unsure the year. What is nice about this conversion is you have a rear emergency brake drum inside the caliper. Having said that I cant get it to work....

Fronts were as advertised, Out .375".

I had to modify the caliper mounts to get the disc center to the caliper. This was very disappointing for the money that was spent on the kit. I was very clear I wanted a 100% bolt in kit and didn't want to fart around. Luckily I have a surface grinder and could remove some material (Inadvertently added more on the back to compensate) to fix the problem.

Brake bias is all done through the Wilwood calipers. (Different piston sizes), No voodoo magic here. I put the front on the back and the back on the front as I have very little weight up front and very small tires. Not the best combination for braking.

In an extreme lock up situation the back locked up very slightly before the fronts. I'm ok with that. I've learned over the years with off road rails how to drive with little to no front brakes and rears locking up.

I did a 0 to 130 KPH to 0 test and was extremely impressed with the brake performance. Totally predictable, stopped straight as a dime. Its taken my car to the next level no question about it.

Is it all over kill? Yeah, it is but so is the rest of the car so only seems right.

The brake set was a kit, I used their master cylinder. Bolted it in, bled the system and gave it hell.

I also installed Wildwood steering brakes. The system works beautifully as one would expect as its all from the same company (Wilwood).

As for Findlater. With all the modifications to the car ill be building my confidence with it for the next little while. I've got a whistling noise that I cant for of the life of me find (This is new). Got to get the gremlins out!!!

Thu Jun 13, 2024 3:26 am

Thanks for the details!

My brake upgrade is done now too.

I went with EMPI (Ghia copy I'm told) fronts. Initially I was disappointed with them as the brake effort increased dramatically but then I also went from a 14" rim and 22" tall rubber to 15" rim with 26" rubber. That I realize now was part of the change.

The rears are off a 944 N/A car and yes they also have a drum and shoes inside the disc for emergency brakes. Initially they did not hold very well but my brake grinder guy was not able to clean up the drum part of the rotor. It didn't fit on his drum lathe. Now that I have used them a bit and re-adjusted them they hold pretty good. Not as good as the E brake on the stock drums but there is a substantial difference in the drum and shoe size! I also went from 14" rear rims and 24" rubber to 16" rims and 28" rubber so a lot of changes.

I stayed with the stock Bug master cylinder to help keep peddle effort down. I also lengthened the brake peddle arm in an effort to reduce the effort further. My wife is not a 260lb gal with football player legs! The end result is a reasonably light peddle (I am very happy with that!) but it's not that firm and does have a fair bit of travel. It's a compromise like so many other things on our cars.

I have tried a few hard stops and am very pleased with the stopping distance and effort but I have not reached lock up yet so the jury is still out on the balance. No sudden surprises at this point anyway.

Fri Jun 14, 2024 4:35 am

What is the snag that you are up against in getting your E brakes to work?

Sat Jun 15, 2024 5:11 am

Sounds like you got it all figured out, awesome. I agree these cars ate heavily modified so we are on our own so to speak to figuring things out.

My Ebrake shoe was extreemly tight when assembling. It went together but barely. They way the mechanism works is super micky mouse IMO, very shocked Porsche would do it the way they did. When I set up my emergency cables the first time on the drum brakes I didn't have enough slack in the cables which made it hard to release them. Lesson learned this time. But now you pull it and not much happens. I haven't had much time to play with it. Maybe once the pads seat in a bit they will come around.

Tue Jun 18, 2024 8:20 am

The way the shoes were actuated is a bit different alright but it seems to work well enough. I am not sure if yours are different than the 944.

As far as me having it all figured out… I will say that it is not perfect but at this point it’s better than the stock Beetle drums. I suppose though if you put bigs and littles on a Bug and lighten the front end a bunch the brakes would not work as intended on that car either.