MadaboutKitcars

Hi Guy's, There hasn't been much activity on the Dino forum for a while so I thought I would throw this one into the air. I was wondering if anyone out there with a DGT had upgraded thier brakes in any way. I would say the brakes on mine are pretty poor, even though the pads and discs have got very little wear on them and the brake fluid is new. I had thought about a servo but with the dual circuit brakes it would mean fitting two remote units which I don't think there's room for, or swapping to a single circuit system with a different master cylinder, which seems like a bit of a backward step. I have the standard set up of Lancia front discs on the rear and Lada 124 discs and callipers on the front. I don't know of any other callipers that would fit as a replacement for the feeble ones that are on there. I also thought that maybe sourcing some drilled and grooved discs and adding some green stuff pads might improve things, but don't want to spend several hundred pounds only to find that it made no improvement. Any thoughts would be most welcome or if anyone has a better setup on thier car I would love to hear about it. I look forward to hearing from you guy's.
All the best Mac.

Brake Upgrade.

Hi Mac,

This is what I have done to my Mirabeau (same running gear as DGT).
For the front brakes I've put on some fiat coupe/lancia delta integrale front discs which are 284 diameter and 22mm thick and are vented - I think they went straight on to the 124 hubs. I bought some wilwood 4 pot radial mount calipers and machined up some adaptors to suit. Alfa 145 cloverleaf discs are the same dimensions and pcd but have a different height rotor offset but as you would make the caliper adaptor to suit I don't think this matters.

For the rears I was looking for a powerful handbrake caliper which would suit the same discs. After a lot of searching I found the mk2 toyota MR2 (revision 3 SW20 chassis) are perfect but make sure you get the calipers with 22 stamped on them (disc width). I haven't fitted them yet and I still have to make the adaptor plate and probably modify the arm where the cable hooks into - but I am sure this shouldn't be too hard....

Best place I have found for the calipers, pads and discs is Rally Design, they are good. You will have to trawl (carefully) through ebay for the MR2 calipers though as I bought the wrong ones first time round

You may have to change your master cylinder to compensate for the different piston diameters - I have two master cylinders and a balance bar setup on mine.

Jon

Hi Jon,
Thanks for the advice and suggestions. I don't have access to a machine shop at the moment, but I could "farm out" that side of things. Were the fiat coupe/lancia delta integrale front calipers not suitable for use in the conversion? Let me know how you get on with the MR2 rear setup as a more powerful handbrake would be very welcome.

Cheers Mac.

Hi Mac,

I didn't even consider the original calipers to be honest, the Wilwood ones are 4 piston and machined from billet aluminium, when I got them they were about £112 each new and to get secondhand calipers and then buy the seal kit to refurb them didn't seem worth it! With the rears however, I couldn't find any after-market caliper that was powerful enough that also included a handbrake mechanism and I didn't want to go down the route of two calipers per rear wheel!

I figured on the MR2 as it is mid-engined for a start, similar in weight and performance and had roughly the same disc size that I wanted to use. I will keep you posted on the progress although at the moment this is very slow as I always seem to have too many other things to do!

On a different matter, do you happen to know which vehicle the window lifters came from?

Cheers
Jon

Hi Jon,

I can see your logic there, as you rightly say the figures wouldn't add up. I'm afraid I don't know where the window lifters came from Jon. I don't have a lot of documentation in that area, perhaps one of you guy's out there could help, has anyone got a list of doner parts? My door latches are rather worn and could do with replacing but I don't know which car they were from, if anyone reading has a list of doner parts maybe you could post it.

All the best, Mac.

hi guys
The electric window motors are a lucas item.I only have a lucas part number I'm afraid-no details on what car they came off. part no 60251070/ also they is a part no 60925030 for the motor drive gears.
As to the door latches thses are from a leyland/daf van and that part number is 3/21330. hope this helps. ian

Hi there.What model wilwood calipers did you go for-there are so many.I've looked at hi-spec 4 pots radial mount also.
Ian

Hi
What model of wilwood caliper did you go for?-as there are so many listed. I've looked at brembo,which are very nice but far too expensive.Another one to look at is the hi-spec range 4 pot radial mount.They also do rear calipers with an hand brake that complies with SVA/IVA.
Ian

I went for the Wilwood Forged Midilite radial mount caliper, mainly because they include piston dust seals. It seemed that very few of the aftermarket calipers had them built in at the time. Also you can easily get approved road pads for them.

I had a look at the Hi Spec motorsport handbrake calipers a while ago, they look pretty good but I decided to go for a standard road car caliper as it seemed more straight forward, ie; it's already road approved and pads and seals are readily available.

Hi
Thanks for the info.What size piston did you go for? (1.75/1.5/1.35/1.25)They have 4 different sizes on the rally design page! Hispec do an almost identical billet caliper with dust seals etc-guess what same price!
Ian

Hi Ian,

I've just been digging out the info for the calipers - I went for the 1.5" piston option. I will have to have a look at the car to see the master cylinder sizes I went for, I think I plumped for two 0.75" cylinders on the balance bar setup.

I actually made the pedal box myself with clutch,brakes and acc. pedal as I couldn't find anything that I was happy to use at the time. It all works really well although the brakes are a tad heavy but then I haven't bedded them in yet and I also need to set the bias up properly - this will only be possible when the car's finished and that could be anytime in the next decade!

Jon

Hi Jon
Thanks for the info.I've spoke to rally design on this and they needed the brake pedal to master cylinder push rod ratio (ie-5>1), master cylinder size and exsisting brake piston size. They suggested either the 1.75" or the 1.50" but in the midilite range (approx£136 +vat). Apparently it is all down to brake pedal length/push rod ration, not just size of calipers!!
ian

Have you managed to sort out your brakes yet? I've just been going through some old notes from when I designed the pedal box. I worked on a 6.5:1 pedal ratio - don't know if this helps.
Jon

Hi.
I purchased a ready made pedal box from demon tweeks with front / rear bias adjust complete with wilwood master cyclinders.The brake pedal is 6>1 with a master cylinder for the front of .750 and for the rear of .625. Front brakes have been uprated to 280 x 25mm vented disc with wilwood 1.75" 4pot calipers.Rear brakes are aslo being uprated to 265x12mm solid disc with smaller 1.5" 4pot wilwoods.Wilwood do a hand brake caliper but have been told to avoid this as
it seems it is no good for sva/iva. Where as hispec hand brake caliper is sva/iva compatable.
All sounds fine but it's on the road where it counts-and like you that is anytime in the next 10 years!!!layball:
ian

Mirabeau

Is the Mirabeau still available?

I don't think so. If you are keen to buy one you will need to keep an eye out on ebay and other sites for one of the few that were built.
They don't come up very often but coincidentally this one came up on ebay earlier this month, I'm not sure if it sold.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Ferrari-Dino-kit-car-/372396462081?nordt=true&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.m43663.l10137