Monday, August 10, 2009 - 04:53 pm, by: Shane Van Ross(Shane_1991)
Guys...i know that i cant do it because of the hand brake issue...however was wondering if there is a way to get around this...keeping in mind i have not looked at what is involved as yet...thanks in advance..
Peter Nitschke Junk Filterer South Australia UZZ30 UZZ31
Monday, August 10, 2009 - 08:14 pm, by: Mike Dobkin(Razman)
My mid engined car needs 4 pot calipers on the rear because of the different weight distribution but surely if you do this to a Soarer you will end up with unbalanced brakes..... unless you are thinking of putting monster brakes on the front?
You can easily mount 4 pot calipers like the Wilwood Powerlites (with integral handbrake) on the standard disc but it will mean fabbing some bracketry - not too difficult though.
Monday, August 10, 2009 - 08:32 pm, by: Shane Van Ross(Shane_1991)
cool cool...just thinking about it though...Unbalanced brakes...???please explain...im not sure what this means...
I was under the impression that the fronts have dedicated lines...and will always brake harder than the back thus ensuring 70 /32 split or 60/40 etc...
Tuesday, August 11, 2009 - 12:22 am, by: Mike Dobkin(Razman)
The Soarer's braking system is basically split into two independent circuits - front and rear. Both circuits are fed by the same master cylinder which has two outputs. Therefore the force exerted on the brake pedal is distributed evenly between the front & rear circuits. During the design stage, the stopping power is carefully calculated and appropriate sized discs & calipers selected. The end result is a (theoretical)perfectly balanced system where nothing is going to lock up dramatically.
Using your suggestion of increasing the braking efficiency of the rear circuit will make the back brakes lock up before the fronts. To maintain balance you would have to increase the efficiency of the front brakes to compensate.
On a front engined car, weight transference means that most of the braking is required on the front - the rears do very little by comparison.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009 - 08:57 am, by: Dave Cazes(Cazman)
Answering the OP's original question,
The soarers handbrake is completely seperate to the actual calipers. It runs a drum/shoe setup INSIDE the rotor iteslf.
YOu can therefore change the caliper at will and it will not effect your cars parking system.
As for the people saying you dont need more braking power, thats rubbish. one of the fastest soarers in SA that makes 490rwkw and hits 300kph has 8 pot front brakes, and its still not enough.
As long as the upgrades are done safely, then there is no down side except the lighter wallet
Tuesday, August 11, 2009 - 12:14 pm, by: Peter Nitschke(Pen)
Dave's plan only works if your new callipers use the existing rotors. 4 pot Supra or Celsior brakes use a bigger rotor which unfortunately doesn't have the onboard hand brake drum incorporated.
So yeah, you could change the calliper, but you need to make sure it can use the smaller existing rotor.
Needing more front brakes isn't the same as needing more rear brakes.
Sunday, August 16, 2009 - 07:09 pm, by: Matt Newman(Soarersrock)
Peter i have recently done a supra 4/2 pot conversion and used DBA rotors for the stock supra sizes and the handbrake setup is the same and still works fine
Wednesday, October 28, 2009 - 11:51 am, by: Costa Tsimiklis(Driftshop)
A brake bias adjuster can adjust the fluid flow between front/rear brake calipers.
80-90% of the stopping power in hard braking is all the front end. In addition, the rear wheels and suspension unload under heavy braking thus making reducing the contact weight and and effective braking torque on the rear brake system. You would be better off going for a larger diameter disc for more breaking torque and a larger pad with more pistons to evenly distribute front braking force, and 2 spot rear supra brakes.
You can install the celsior 4 spot rears, but you would be at a disadvantage unless you bias it properly and/or increase the front brake disk size and pistons for better performance.
Saturday, December 31, 2011 - 10:58 am, by: Andy Losurdo(Funny_guy77syd)
u can do this but its a waste of time all u need is a small preportion valve so minimal pressure is applyed to the rear calipors ull have to ask a brake specialist and get them to give u the right preportion valve
Peter Nitschke Junk Filterer South Australia UZZ30 UZZ31
Saturday, December 31, 2011 - 02:37 pm, by: Peter Nitschke(Pen)
In English.
You can do this, but it's a waste of time. All you need is a small proportioning valve so that minimal pressure is applied to the rear callipers. You will have to ask a brake specialist and get them to give you the right proportioning valve.
Sunday, February 12, 2012 - 09:02 pm, by: Aaron Mead(Aaron)
You can land a set of four pot forged wilwoods and rotors with pads and lines for under $1100. For about $100 extra you can get the polymatrix 'A' pads. Bloody awesome!
Gareth Richards TryHard Bristol UK GTT-L twin turbo auto / Aristo Mk1 TT / Lexus GS300 SE Mk2
Tuesday, March 06, 2012 - 08:44 pm, by: Gareth Richards(Garethr)
Forgive me if I'm pointing out something that everyone already knows, but the number of pistons in a caliper has no bearing on how powerful the brakes are. My bike has 4-piston calipers, but I wouldn't want to use them to stop my Soarer.
Given the same driver, master cylinder, and pad/disc material, the variables that affect braking power are the effective diameter of the disc (roughly through the centre of the pad, unless you want to do some maths) and the piston area on one side of the caliper.
If you used brackets (as available aftermarket for the Lexus IS) to space out the Soarer TT 2-piston caliper (44.4mm pistons) to fit a Supra TT 323mm disc, the brakes would actually be more powerful than the Supra 4-pots (42.8mm pistons) on the same disc.