Amazon: Brake System Upgrade

[Oilline]

Love your TIG welding , im not quite there yet.

[dheming]

Originally Posted by Oilline

Love your TIG welding , im not quite there yet.

Nice to hear from you. How is your estate coming along? Are you still planning on going with dual master cylinders?

[dheming]

Ended up re-welding the tester piece today. I'm trying to reduce the amount of undercutting happening on the tube. Better but still not quite there yet:





After thinking about it for a while I've decided to go with an aftermarket pedal box instead of using a custom brake arm setup. This is for a number of reasons. Biggest of which is at some point I want to run a T5 tranny so I will have to significantly widen the tunnel. I really don't want to have to modify or remake the custom brake arm when that happens. Not to mention if I ever want to upgrade the steering column which currently comes very close to the brake arm even though it's very small. As for boxes I'm looking at the Tilton 600 series 3 pedal options.

I always knew my clutch and/or brake master cylinders leaked. So today I decided to see how much damage was done underneath:

[Oilline]

Would that be floor mounted or firewall mounted? Thought the same myself.

[dheming]

The floor mount would be ideal from an ergonomic standpoint, but I don't think there's enough room to mount one. I'm on the tall side so I'd like to have as much leg room as possible. I contemplated modifying the lower firewall with a kick-out to give more room and also allow for a floor mount box, but the frame rail runs right along underneath the outer edge. So you could only really do a kick-out across about 3/4 or 2/3 of the bottom wall. That might work for the setup now, but again when it comes time to widen the trans tunnel there might not be enough room left to fit the pedal box. I will have to do so more measuring to see what we are working with. A floor mount 3 pedal box is the gold standard when it comes to performance driving so it would be pretty awesome to make that happen.

Plan B is to use a firewall mount version. While the ergonomics aren't as ideal, this style would be very easy to mount without having to modify the firewall with kick-outs. Another plus is that when the time comes to widen the tunnel repositioning the pedals is as simple as drilling new mounting holes.

[dheming]

Doing some reading on AP Racing pedal boxes I came across something new to me, the trunnion style balance bar. I had no idea that standard spherical bearing types have significant variation in brake bias depending on the force applied. This thread has some useful info on this topic.

There's not too many stand alone trunnion balance bars out there. Tilton makes the 72-280 and Pro_System makes the PEY.100318. I can't find a price for the AP Racing one, but I shudder thinking about how much they want for it.

[Bartezz]

First visit since my last post with all the links. Read thru the whole thread all over again adn it's still as inspiring as it was the first time. Once you're done with the suspension I might, only might, have the guts and use this thread as a blue print and try this with the help of a mate. I am completely untrained in steel working and you make it look so easy... gonna be a challenge for sure!

[dheming]

Originally Posted by Bartezz

First visit since my last post with all the links. Read thru the whole thread all over again adn it's still as inspiring as it was the first time. Once you're done with the suspension I might, only might, have the guts and use this thread as a blue print and try this with the help of a mate. I am completely untrained in steel working and you make it look so easy... gonna be a challenge for sure!

Thank you for the kind words. This is why I'm posting so many pics, part numbers and results of research so that people may use this thread as a reference of sorts. I'm not saying the way I'm doing everything is the best way, but merely one way of doing things. Especially since there is so little aftermarket support for the Amazon in general I feel it's important to clearly describe the things that can be made to work.

[Oilline]

Are you thinking of a reverse mount pedal box to position the master cylinders inside the cabin?

[dheming]

Originally Posted by Oilline

Are you thinking of a reverse mount pedal box to position the master cylinders inside the cabin?

Yeah that makes the most sense from a packaging standpoint. I'm looking at the Tilton 72-606 overhung pedal assembly for around $280USD. Unfortunately the same box in the 900 series that uses the 77 master cylinders and the trunnion balance bar is around $1400USD, not including the master cylinders at $336 each. In total a 900 series would come out to ~$2500USD, which is more than I paid for my entire estate.

That being said I'd really prefer to run a trunnion bar so plan A is to go with a 600 series, but make a simple custom brake arm to run the Pro_System trunnion bar instead of the standard spherical that it comes with. That would be the most cost effective combination IMO.

If I was going to drop the kind of money that the 77 series masters cost I'd much rather spend just a little more for the AP Racing pull-style short travel to cutoff masters instead and make a pedal box from scratch. That combined with a trunnion bar would be the ultimate in efficiency and feedback.