1961 (Link Pin) VW Brake upgrade

[NoNameYet]

I've been searching and thinking about doing my own custom made conversion, and I happen to stumble to this site this morning. I am actually reading through all the old posts one after the other but cant seem to find anyone doing what I'm thinking about.

I want to keep my EMPI 5's.

Front drum turned down to use as hub and wheel mounting flange, faced and drilled to take 5x112 vented disc from passat '97- which is 280mm Diam, 22mm thickness new, 46.5mm overall height, 179mm inner diameter which will clear link pin heads. The disc is to be turned on its centering hole to clear the bearing housing of the hub.

I'm thinking to go for Golf 4 calipers (for vented disc), which have a 53mm piston but have none to measure yet, so dont know if they will clear the wheel mounting flange.

My questions:

Has anybody done their conversion using these parts or some of them?

Can non vented type calipers be widened to go on vented disc? (I know some machining may be involved). I might need to do this for the rear setup later, to keep all hydraulics from Golf.

[volkdent]

Unless you just like to machine stuff, why not just buy a wide 5 brake kit? Any tire your going to be able to fit onto a EMPI 5 shouldn't be able to out-brake the kits already available.

Airkewld has a bunch of stuff that should satisfy your requirments.

Jason

[NoNameYet]

Shipping costs make importing the heavier stuff quite expensive for me. i live on a small island and they have to be airlifted. Late model parts are available off the shelf down the road, or from the breaker and that's way cheaper. I have to add I have 2 cars to convert, maybe 3. machining aint expensive for me though ;-)

[flat]

I've messed around with a similar setup. I'm assuming that you want to mount the passat rotor to the back (inboard side) of your hub, like most of the wide 5 kits out there like CSP, etc...

I tried that, and the problem I had was:
1) It's hard to machine the drum/hub to have a flat mounting surface for the rotor and still retain the strength. Most of the webs have to be faced out.

2) when you mount the caliper, the hat of the rotor isn't deep enough, so the caliper hits the hub. You can put something in to space the rotor away from the hub, but then the rotor gets close to the spindle/carrier. Also, I;m uncomfortable with so many components in the system.

Play around with it though, I'd be glad to see you get somewhere with it...


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