So I picked a direction for my rear disc brakes on my 240z project. After talking with Cody we decided the best long term fit would be to just upgrade to Wilwoods all the way around. The rear Wilwood upgrade offered by Silvermine has a separate mechanical handbrake caliper along with a four piston hydraulic caliper.

New vented disc

BP10 street pads

New rotor versus the old rotor

To install the the parking brake caliper this yellow zinc plate needs to be removed. The caliper will then bolt to the aluminum adapter plate that is is supplied by Silvermine. The antisqueal shims on the rear of the parking brake pads have to be removed also. They are still a very tight fit over the rotor. So I took a 2" Rolok and dressed the pads down a hair. They just fit over the rotors now

There's a YouTube video I watched that shows slight reduced the diameter of the stub axle for clearance for the Rotor ID. I'm not sure I needed to but I did it anyway. I used a caliper to try to make them even all the way around.

 

 

Also if you're starting from drums you will need to remove the all the drum brakes, shoes, hardware and the drum backing plate. To remove it whole, requires pulling the stub axle. The medieval method is to cut it in half.

I had to cut off my old adapter plates.They were an old design that I installed when I had the stub axles out. All the new designs only use 3 of the four backer plate holes

On 11/25/2024 at 12:51 AM, Patcon said:

a four piston hydraulic caliper.

Are you not worried that this kind of brakecaliper on the rear makes MUCH to much braking power? I read a lot of people that go from drumbrakes to diskbrakes are experiencing much to hard braking and it can be very dangerous when a car brakes to hard on the rearaxle.. You need to find a balance in that and this can be very tricky! (That's why i still prefer the drumbrakes in the rear.)

Also the grooved and drilled disks... ON the REAR??  If you ask me, waiting for a lot of trouble?  I would go (If i wanted disks) for a plain single disk of about 12mm oe so.  (Rear brakes only do about 20-25% of the total of braking..  You even can drive a car without rear brakes, i don't recommend but it's not much difference.. don't ask how i know hahaha...)

Also, do you leave the brakeforce reducer in the rear line in, or do you need to take it out? (I guess the brakeparts deliverer/compagnie has a surtain plan delivered with the parts?)

I am replacing the fronts with larger Wilwood's too. If necessary I will add a proportioning valve to get the bias right. They don't really provide any instructions. So I decided Id make a thread

22 hours ago, Patcon said:

If necessary I will add a proportioning valve to get the bias right.

I have never altered a brakesystem, but read about it and i'm sure you WILL need a proportioning valve!  Unless your installing 500HP plus you don't need cooled and drilled and grooved disks on the rear axle.  At less than 150 horse (As it's 150SAE HP) you don't really need bigger brakes than original provided.)

As john Morton once said in a commercial: front disks and rear drums, i wouldn't want it any other way.. (Or something alike 😉)

I am sure I will build a motor at some point and may go turbo at some point. It will probably have 300-350HP at some point in the future. We have some great mountain roads near us and the stock brakes don't like those long twisty downhill sections. They would always get hot and smell. These should stay nice and cool no matter how hard I push! 😉

On 11/27/2024 at 1:45 AM, dutchzcarguy said:

Are you not worried that this kind of brakecaliper on the rear makes MUCH to much braking power? I read a lot of people that go from drumbrakes to diskbrakes are experiencing much to hard braking and it can be very dangerous when a car brakes to hard on the rearaxle.. You need to find a balance in that and this can be very tricky! (That's why i still prefer the drumbrakes in the rear.)

Also the grooved and drilled disks... ON the REAR??  If you ask me, waiting for a lot of trouble?  I would go (If i wanted disks) for a plain single disk of about 12mm oe so.  (Rear brakes only do about 20-25% of the total of braking..  You even can drive a car without rear brakes, i don't recommend but it's not much difference.. don't ask how i know hahaha...)

Also, do you leave the brakeforce reducer in the rear line in, or do you need to take it out? (I guess the brakeparts deliverer/compagnie has a surtain plan delivered with the parts?)

 The rear brake caliper is very weak compared to the front caliper. It only has a 1.6 piston volume while the front calipers have a 4.0 piston volume. After much testing we Found out that if you delete the original proportion valve The front rear brake bias will be close to perfect.

The dimple and slotted rotors do not help Performance at all. It is only for show.

So here is the starting point

 

The adapter bracket goes on like this

The SSM logo goes facing the underside of the car.

I mocked it up to make sure everything was going to center

The new parking brake cable wouldn't fit in the brackets at the parking brake. I tried spreading the ears some but that wasn't going to work. There was 1 1/2mm different in diameter.

So I used this with a sand paper roll

About 10 minutes and all was better

Threaded the elbow into the caliper

When the caliper is installed, it is very close to the strut. I didn't remember that Wheee had used a very similar setup or I would have cribbed off of what he did. He mentions in his build thread that attaching the lines to the calipers before mounting them would be best because of lack of space.

The hardest part of the whole job is finding the right orientation for the parking brakes and routing the cable

I started with this orientation

But the cable was touching my CV axle adapter plates. It might work with the factory halfshafts...

So the MC4 is indexable at 120 degree intervals

If you loosen these three screws the back can be turned to another position. Be careful to get the thin rubber seal back in the right place before reattaching it.

So each caliper had 3 position and the calipers are handed. So there are six possible orientations available.

So then I tried this orientation

I liked it pretty well until I realized this is at full droop and when the suspension gets loaded the cable is going to get pinched by the underside of the car. The cable really needs to be more horizontal...

So then I set it up like this...

The strut is minimally in the way, but it seems to work and disengage properly. I believe this is the same orientation that Wheee used. It is easier to get the cable into the caliper first before mounting it to the adapter plate. I am going to work on some brake line brackets to make sure the hydraulic line doesn't rub on anything.

I crossed the cables under the car with the left feeding the right side, and the right feeding the left. I ran them above the differential and through the mustache bar to loop around from the rear.

Hope this helps...

On 11/28/2024 at 3:21 AM, dutchzcarguy said:

I have never altered a brakesystem, but read about it and i'm sure you WILL need a proportioning valve!  Unless your installing 500HP plus you don't need cooled and drilled and grooved disks on the rear axle.  At less than 150 horse (As it's 150SAE HP) you don't really need bigger brakes than original provided.)

As john Morton once said in a commercial: front disks and rear drums, i wouldn't want it any other way.. (Or something alike 😉)

I heard a lot of "stock brakes are just fine - even if you autocross!" when I first got my 260Z on the road (2008). Then I signed up for a NASA weekend at Firebird Raceway here in Phoenix. My stock brakes were done before the first day ended. (ya, ya, I did need to learn better brake management...) . That prompted my first front brake upgrade: Stock rotors with Toyota 4-piston calipers. Hardly noticed the difference. Small improvement. Disappointed, I then went to the vented front rotor / Toyota wide 4-piston caliper. BIG improvement. Then I installed better friction, more $$ than ceramic, but LARGE improvement with Porterfield pads and shoes. The Porterfields (like many sport or race frictions) were better than stock "cold" (around town) and got really grippy once you got some heat in them. Loved that setup cuz:

A. I daily drive. In Phoenix. Not quite as bad as SoCal, but close.

2. Not many people realize how much mountain driving you can do in Arizona - and I do as much as I can. My 260Z Turbo is an uphill beast - the torque of this engine is awesome. But what goes up must come down. My first curvy hilly trip, I came back into Tortilla Flat with a huge smile because my brakes were better at the bottom of the hill than at the top and believe me I used them both ways.

My fronts just met end-of-life and I had to replace the pads and rotors after 10 years of driving on them. But, ya, still using my Brembo drums in the rear.

16 inch Rota RB's +4

1 hour ago, Patcon said:

16 inch Rota RB's +4

Yes, they are beautiful. Have you decided on lugs and valve stems?

 

Edited December 17, 2024Dec 17 by w3wilkes