Mustang Tech

Not sure how that flat plate will work, i had to offset mine to locate the calipers properly but they bolt to all 4 hub bolts. You could adapt any caliper you want. I used the UPC hub, BA/F calipers and 320 Ford Turbo rotors. I have drawings for the adapter plate but two holes were 1 mm out so I've lust laser cut them in ply to re-check them. Here's the pics from my build on fit-up with 3d printed parts to check. You can see the offset required in the 2nd and 3rd pic.

Lovely to finally have brakes that can lockup the front wheels if you want rather than pray that they stop.

Yeah that looks great mate. That's pretty much what I'd have to make up, although my caliper would be really close to the mounting plate, as your dicscs are like a 68mm offset I think, and the ones I want to use are 50mm.


In the meantime however, for you smart folk here. If I was to get like a 6-8mm plate cut that sits on the face of the spindle, and would be bolted to all 4 holes, with my bracket being on the rear of the leading two holes, would that strengthen the spindle face and incorporate the trailing bolt holes into integral strength of the bracket?

Similar to above I guess, however the caliper bracket would be bolted to the rear of the leading spindle holes, not the plate itself.

Reason is my kit is good to now in terms of everything matching up perfectly, it's just the strength thing now. If I could find a way to strengthen it without making a whole new caliper bracket up and potentially creating other fitment issues, that would be great.

Keep in mind that the caliper "clamps"from both sides, so there would be little or no flex in the mounting plate.

The reason for wanting all 4 bolts used is the rotation forces being applied.

Yup understand that. So would have a plate to sandwich the spindle in between the caliper bracket help for tge rotational forces, noting I'm only using 2 leading holes on one side.

If the rotating forces are only acting the leading two holes, by added a plate and torquing it down to all 4 bolt holes, with the caliper now being bolted to not only the leading spindle holes but also the plate, would this help share the load??

Which Engineer did you use for approval of your design Ed..?

I am sure I read somewhere that you had to have as much meat around the bolt hole as the diameter of the hole itself?

It doesn't look that way for the calliper bolts on that green bracket.

Ok, so just I went to two different engineers not far from me to get their opinions while also getting my brake brackets milled.
They were both of agreeance that adding an 8mm plate that bolts to all 4 bolts on the face of the hub, and then having the bracket bolted to the rear of the front two holes, would be sufficient enough for the setup. They both thought adding that plate to the front would greatly increase strength on the spindle in the rotational force aspect.
This is their words not mine(and I understand what people say can be crap a lot of the time) and i am 100% open to any thoughts on here still as I know there are some smart people on here

One of them is making up the plates now. 8mm steel with the top two bolts recessed 1mm to clear the back of the hub.

Luke - some times hole edge clearance or edge margin is based on diameter (i.e 1.5 x D or 2 x D) but really depends on many variables plate thickness being significant. You could also have a hole close to an edge, but load it in opposing direction so would be largely irrelevent.

I probably would have increased material around the two caliper bracket bolts (i.e turned them into ears) but also bare in mind the load would be parallel to the long edge so tear-out is less of a concern (i.e there is no significant load forcing caliper radially away from axle centreline). The calipers would be a applying a force at a tangent to the brake disc circle plus I would anticipate some axial loads (i.e away/towards vehicle centreline) with sliding/floating caliper. With the balanced 4 pistons it should hydraulically equalise on both sides of disc so shouldn't be negligible.

I also agree with those comments Husky - with the sandwich plate you would stiffen up the caliper mounting (to limit any deflection) plus also add material against a shear/tear out failure of the spindle plus better load distribution.

High fives all round!

More good news also.
While I wait to get the plates made, I bolted up the freshly milled brackets to check if they newly delivered Falcon 355x32mm rotors would fit. A bit of heart in mouth, but absolutely millimeter perfect. Offset is fine too now. Brackets had to be milled 13.5mm. Once I bolt everything together I may have to shim the caliper to get the run out spot on, but looks pretty good by the eye for now.
I will put pictures up once I get the plates back of everything installed.

Thanks trav for the heads up. If it's wasn't for you I would have just bolted everything together as it was before. I'm just hoping my template for the brackets was spot on and everything fits

Ps you can get precision washers for shimming calipers by Wilwood et

Pinto-Pete wrote:Which Engineer did you use for approval of your design Ed..?

John Wilson. He does ACT and NSW cars. He actually said my original brakes were ok that the car came with. I hated them because they only had 5 mm plate for the brackets and were useless to stop with, VB calipers and XY ventilated discs. They only bolted to 3 holes but he was fine with that. My new one is a disc that bolts to all 4 holes and is far superior with no flex.

Got the bracket back. As always didn't quite fit, had to open up the centre a little as it was off centre slight and the hub was rubbing on it. Pretty hard to do when all I had was a flapper wheel and a big ass file also had to enlarge one of the traliling holes slightly as it was off centre also. Whether it was my template or the machinist who knows, but all good now.

Anyway test fit everything and fits like a glove. Took a quick pic with the 355x32 rotors. When I fit everything going properly tonight I'll get some pics of the bracket etc

Bolted it up this morning. You can see the lack of clearance with the UPC hub, and probably why they went to the rear of the spindle. We had to recess the top caliper bracket bolt by 3mm as it was hitting the hub.
The trailing side I just used high tensile button heads and a lock nut on the rear.

I'll stop by a bearing soon today and grab some shims. The calipers are sooo close to being centered without any swimming, so pretty happy with it