Wide 5 Disc Brake swap: brain dump

i can't be the only person looking for more information on the vendors that sell wide 5 disc brake kits, so i thought i'd post all the info i have learned to date and update this thread with any relevant information.

From what i can tell, there are three major companies of wide 5 disc brake kits and a few small shops that sell kits too.

AC Industries (www.acindustries.com)
EMPI (www.empius.com)
CB Performance (www.cbperformance.com)
AirKewld (www.airkweld.com)


AC cannot be used with drop spindles ("Not as of yet, it is the R&D stage"), Apparently CB can (and makes a kit), empi has been verified to me that they can, but must be purchased seperatly.

will post more info as i find it.

offset is not specified for any of the kits, but i pried EMPI and got "Yes, the kit will work with drop spindles. You'd be adding about 1 1/2" to the track."

SoCal sells wide 5 disk brake kits for both the front and rear. They are sold as "0" increase in offset. I have them both front and rear on my car. I don't know if they work with dropped spindles or not, you would need to ask SoCal about that.

I have put about 40k kilometers on mine..
1) they are heavy, too heavy, solid cast iron
2) they tend to squeek when cold or very hot

But, they are cheap at $500 front or rear, and they work for me. I set the front ride height with the adjusters and that was that...didn't need dropped spindles. Not much more I can say about them

those are AC Industries (So Cal is a dealer) and cannot be used with drop spindles.


From CB Performance:
http://www.cbperformance.com/catalog.asp?ProductID=1437
pushes the wheels out an inch on each side.

http://www.cbperformance.com/catalog.asp?ProductID=1247
I believe the back does have a small offset... sorry.

FYI - you can stop squeek by adding an anti-squeek goop/glue to the back of the brake pads and then use a medium course 3M pad on the discs. if that still doenst do it - try chamfering the front edge of the pads.

Don't forget the German CSP kits. I have their discs front and back and am very happy with them - they are superbly engineered.

Front: http://www.csp-shop.de/technik/pdf/deeng/15459.pdf

Rear: http://www.csp-shop.de/technik/pdf/deeng/20676.pdf

Reduced my track by 2mm per side at front, 10mm per side at rear.

Simon

I am looking to buy a 5-wide setup, with front dropped spindles and IRS suspension on the rear for a non-flared body. I have read all the posts and was hoping someone could tell me the following. a)is there a kit that uses aluminium discs (dont want them really heavy). b) uses larger pistons on the rear (something larger than the 34mm pistons commonly used) with an emegency brake. c)looks original from the outside. And one last question - has anyone used shorter front torsion bars on the front, to compensate for the gain in width from the dropped spindles (so as to avoid tires rubbing the fender)? I would like to use 6.5" rims ideally. Thanks

Paul, I am in the process of installing a disc brake conversion on my car. I have taken a 305mm ventilated disc from a 7 series BMW for the front with BMW e46 calipers (junkyard) and golf mk2 rear calipers complete with cable operated handbrake. I have had my own design mounting brakets made from 12mm aluminium plate cut on a water jet machine. I have had a local enginering company modify the front disks by turning the original centers out and turning a new centre piece from aluminium billet to get the correct offset.

The rear disks are also from a vw golf but I use the front disk which are solid.

As i have not made up my mind which wheel is going to be used I have had the hubs drilled to a 5/100 and 4/100 PCD. This will give me a huge choice of wheel

I say huge but the choices available are fairly small by comparison to what you have available in the States.

anything *but* a wide 5 bolt pattern is easily doable. the wide 5 is pas the face of the hub on the dics so some sort of bolt on / welded adaptor must be used.

Simon,
Are the German brakes available in the US? The web site only give the install tech info but not any info about purchase.

You can try www.csp-usa.com, which is where I got my CSP shifter from. The German folks don't seem to interested in responding to emails.

I located the German site for the brakes. There appears to be no US distributor for these parts--correct? At 990 Eu for the rears at today's exchange make these the most expensive I've seen.

CSP's *are* the most expensive conversion brakes available (out of the box)

Simon, I hate to tell you but you've mounted your master cyl. on the wrong side.

John, I'll bet if you contacted the csp-usa folks they could get you the brakes. From personal experience with the shifter, and what I've heard about their other products, I think they're all very well engineered. However, they ARE the most expensive choice for brakes, from what I've seen.

The best part of the CSP rears is the track width. I can get 165's on 4.5 inch wheels in my rear fenders with no problem using the 4 lug VW wheel. When I try to use the Porsche wheels (5 lug on the 130 diameter), the offset puts the wheels at least .5 inch outward and too tight against the fender lip. I really want to use the wide 5 wheel but the Mangel wide 5 chrome wheels also are set outward .5 inch. The CSP rotor has an inward set of 10 mm. I think that would get me clearance for the wide 5 chrome wheels, but I suspect that I can get the wheels re-centered for less than the cost of the CSP disc set-up for the rear axle. I have lots of time to ponder the issue as I slowly move to completion of my project.

John, there are some "0" offset rear disks with emergency brakes available from a couple of companies (AC Industries for one). I have a set on my car with a wide 5 layout. I got mine from So Cal Imports, they were $500 when I got them, I see in the Nov Hot VW's they are now $384.95.

If I were to do it again I would spend more money on lighter assmeblies like from Airkewld, but they are $1000 or so. http://www.thesamba.com/vw/classifieds/detail.php?id=399884
http://www.airkewld.com/parts/proddetail.php?prod=RDK-4000SA

The SoCal's are fine, work fine, just heavy for my light weight car....

airkewled add track - contrary to the ad series run several months ago. Check thesamaba. Lots of pissed off people. Look like quality stuff, but defiantly not zero offset.

Paul,

thanks for the information regarding adding track. The last I read they were evidently pretending to be "0" offset. You may have saved me a few $$$$ and a problem as I was leaning toward a set of these AirKewled rears....I converted to short axles so I have a bit of room, but not any I care to give away....

Paul (and anybody else with the CB Wide-5s who also have the drop-spindle setup), you're going to have one hell of a time bleeding your brakes properly.
The simple answer isn't easy, and probably a bit more of a PITA than it has to be, but you'll wind up having to remove the calipers from the front brake assemblies and making the bubble move TO the bleeders -- instead of being able to bleed them in place. Then bleed the rears normally.
For those who've driven the Hoopty, that relieved about 80 percent of the sponge factor from my car. Before that, I had only bled them in place and there was air above the bleeders.
Needless hell. And dangerous.

After too many hours looking on the internet I have taken the plunge and brought myself some 5-wide brakes. The car is IRS, non-flared. I wanted some serious brakes, that look great. The car will be running a Hayabusa motorbike engine (about 185hp) in the rear (so I keep the rear seats) through a diff set-up (still undecided on which one). The engine maybe upgraded later so I went a bit overkill (the car will only weigh about 1400lbs) and brought Gear-One front and rear 4-piston disc brakes.

The front brales add 3/4" per side. I am using dropped spindles so add about another 1/4" in total. I have a 2" narrowed beam, so it should be about 1/4" narrower to where an standard VW set-up is. The front will have 5 1/2" mangels with 70/185 tires. The Gear-One front brakes can be ordered in balljoint configuration. On the down-side I have to drill a hole for the speedo cable on one hub, shouldnt be too hard.

For the rear the Gear-One brakes push out 3/4" either side, so I am using narrowed trailing arms (1 1/2" narrowed each side). Mangel 5 1/2" wheels (which stick out more 1" more than 4 1/2" wheel which is about the max you can on an IRS non-flared car). These mangels are being widened to 7" (1 1/2" extra on the inside of each wheel). So for the rear I will be 1/2" wider in total to a normal IRS set-up (will be centering the body well and grinding wheel arches if necessary to compensate for this extra 1/4" per side). Tires will be 70/225. On the down-side Gear-One does not have an emergency brake, will have to fab something up.

I am hoping this car will handle and brake like a dime once its finished. 0-60mph is about 4 seconds.

brought this thread back from the dead.

What kind of transaxle are you running with the 'busa motor?



also - on topic of wide 5's, i ended up getting a set of CB Performance wide 5 ball joint front disc brakes and a set of new style EMPI rotors and calipers. Used German hoses / pads. adds 12mm per side.

There's a a few companies making diffs with a reverse gear. Transworks, Sandbullet, Qualife make direct drive units. There are others that make chain drive units (less HP loss but chains sometimes brake). I know the transworks has one forward speed, which is fine as the motorbike engine has a built in 6-speed transmission. These diffs are lighter than a VW transmission and use 930 flanges. They are designed for sand rails and quite a lot of info can be found on the sand rail forums.

is this the same one that was posted on TS today?

http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=190189&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=40

I read it was not a good setup. the quaife is good but expensive. Are you still in the design phase, or in the build phase?

Hey thats looks similar to the Transworks diff, but has two forward gears. Price looks good. I will have to find out if they are reliable? From what I have read so far the Transworks diff has had a lot of issues (i.e. drive shafts braking), but I believe they are sorting these issues. Sandbullet is redesigning their diff, new version avilable later this year. I havent looked at the Quaife diff yet but hear good things about them, quite pricey but I guess it's not going to brake so easy. I am still in the design stage. For engines I looked at Rotaries but the fuel consumption put me off. Also Subarus and Evotechs but the wiring seems a pain. Even electric motors (could be a very balanced car with little weight for the motor) but batteries havent advanced enough yet to get the range. I have heard many people saying a motorbike engine such as a Hayabusa or ZX14 wont make enough torque low end, however it has been done on quite a few cars already weighing about 1400lbs. Google 'Golf Hayabusa', that car weighs about 1400lbs, although it is does have a turbo, I believe the turbo makes a difference mid to high end RPM's. Also Lotus Elise's have had them fitted and I think they weigh a bit more.