Wilwood Dynalite Adapters for E30 Build Thread

[Greymakesstuff]

Hey guys, long time observer but first time posting so I hope I'm doing this right!

Just finished my last exam for this semester and I don't know what to do with myself, so here we go first project of the summer! Anyways, awhile back my buddy bought a crashed civic si and in exchange for pulling the motor for him he gave me the set of Wilwood calipers that were on the car (I believe them to be dynalite calipers judging by the part numbers with 310mm discs). I've also been in the process of converting my early model 318 to the suspension from my 87' 325 vert parts car, so I figured that before I put the fronts in I would try my hand at getting these to fit.

First thing I figured out is that the top hat offset and center bore for the rotors is not going to work so I'm going to have to at the very least bore out the center of the top hat, or get a new setup. Regardless, I got the rotor and caliper very roughly where I wanted them and took some rough measurements. Then, I made a quick model in fusion 360 and made it into a drawing that I printed and cut out of mdf to mock up. So here's that progress:




My cutting was not pretty and it didn't fit amazing, so had to make some modifications to fit around the back two pistons and the shield piece on the knuckle assembly that I may or may not keep or cut. Drawing inspiration from this I made a V2 model and drawing that I'm hoping to cut out better than the last on the scroll saw tomorrow. I'm also going to have to make some custom washers to space the caliper out correctly. Here's the new drawing.



Happy to hear any input, I know there's a lot of debate on how worthwhile brake upgrades are, and I'm sure some of the involvement of doing this will be met with skepticism but I don't mind switching back to the oem setup if this doesn't work out. As long as these brackets are rigid enough (original plan was aluminum but think I'm going to go with steel) along with the better pads, larger rotors, and a good rebuild and fluid flush the benefits will be worthwhile.

I'm also hoping to go and machine the rotor top hats tomorrow at my old high school shop because my lathe isn't big enough so I'll post updates when I make some more progress. And if anyone wants to do a similar thing, the measurements are in the drawings and I can send over the cad files if needed.

Thanks, Grey

[JasonWilson48]

I like the MacGyver mentality and innovation. I also can appreciate a nice Fusion 360 drawing as a fellow engineer. I do not have technical advice, but wanted to give some safety advice as someone who has an E36 M3 front brake setup and a wilwood big brake kit in the rear. I would test the front and rear brakes in phases. Do not change all 4 at once so you don't find yourself in an unsafe situation. If you do it in sets, and keep the OEM gear for the other half, it will provide a small bit of safety and confidence when you do your first highway run and need to slow down from 60-70 mph to get off an exit. Then once you have all the kinks worked out for the first phase, then do the next set. Unless you only have fronts you're putting on... then don't worry about anything i said. Good luck. Looks awesome so far.

[Greymakesstuff]

Thanks for the input. I'll definitely make sure I'll have a backup method to stop before I try anything haha. But yes, for now the plan is just the fronts, in the future I would like to go to Porsche 996 calipers in the front and put these on the rear but we'll see.

[Greymakesstuff]

I finished cutting out and testing the V2 caliper adapters, pretty happy with the fit and location of everything so I'll be making them out of steel shortly.




I also got around to machining the rotors, I thought I could do it without splitting the hats and rotors but after finding the torque specs I bit the bullet and took them apart. So I measured everything up again and drew the dimensions I wanted in fusion and printed off the drawings. I needed to match the backspacing to that of the oem rotors because that seemed to be the easiest option, I also bored and beveled the back side of the center bore to match. Here's me doing that on the lathe at my old high school.





Cleaned up the hats a little while I had them chucked up, hoping to get my dad to anodize them. I still have to add the proper hole for the little attachment screw because the wilwood/honda ones do not line up. And here's the first fitup with the wilwood rotors and hats.



I'm sad at how rough these rotors are, will likely have to get new ones along with pads...

I'm currently boring the attachment screw holes and hoping to cut out the actual brackets soon too. Next up, gotta start thinking about brake lines and ordering some replacement parts for these calipers.

[Greymakesstuff]

Here's some more photos because I exceeded the limit.