Chapter 3 - 84 318i m-tech - M60 powered.

[The Dark Side of Will]

BMW used 12" brakes inside 15" wheels on the E32's & E34's. I don't know what the caliper piston sizes are right off, but my dad does as he just installed E34 540i brakes on his E24.

What rotors/calipers do you have on the car now?

[Jean]

Hey guys,

There is no air in the system, itÂ’s been bled many times and I had initially a bad out of the box front wilwood master cylinder . IÂ’ve also taken this car to a local scca champ that races an older tube frame corvette with manual brakes to compare the feel . HeÂ’s driven my car and then we did calculations of the wilwood Mc sizes and stock e30 caliper piston sizes, etc and determined itÂ’s just not a good match . The pedal force required to stop my car is more than 2x the amount compared to his corvette .

I completely understand and expect that it will require more pedal force than stock setup , I am not arguing that . The fact of the matter is that this recommended wilwood pedal box and Mc sizes are NOT a good match for stock e30 calipers . If you simply remove your stock booster and single BMW MC and replace it with manual pedal box with two 5/8 size master cylinders all other thighs being equal you end up with brakes that work worse than stock.

So, having said that my next step is to try more aggressive pads and if that doesn’t work then I have go with big brake kit , as there simply isn’t an easy way to double front caliper piston size on these cars while still staying with 4lug (my wheel selection requires me to stay with 15” diameter 4x100) .

IÂ’ve been chatting with Massive Lee to see what route I should take, and in the process of test fitting his front big brake kit templates against my current wheels (requires 3-5mm spacer) for caliper clearance .

So, this is why I donÂ’t recommend this wilwood setup all other things being equal. It also puts a lot of extra force on your firewall that I donÂ’t see anyone reinforcing when going with this pedal setup. Stock setup does not put as much stress as manual pedal box since booster part of the system .

If I was going to do this again, I would use the remote e32/34 booster mounted behind headlight vs manual pedal box. If you are set on using manual pedal box then IÂ’d recommended reinforcing firewall and get ready to try different pads and calipers just to get the same performance as you had with stock setup! Which is pretty bad if you ask me.

Otherwise another option is to use a Tilton floor mounted pedal box as IÂ’ve mentioned before, it gives you better serviceability than wilwood , it has better fit and finish and less play in the pedal assembly compared to wilwood . YouÂ’ll want to build a reinforced floor section for it vs. reinforcing the firewall and will still need to work out caliper piston sizes vs master cylinders .

Hope this helps .

[dasmanschaft012]

Required pedal force is MUCH higher with manual brakes vs booster.
I would recommend bumping the front cyl size up one and rear down one, compared to what garagistic recommends. I had lots of issues bleeding my Wilwood set up. Now that its bled, I have Rx7 calipers front, stock rear, and Hawk DTCs. It stops decent now but still requires quite a bit of pedal pressure. I'd recommend trying a local manual brakes car.

[dmjensen]

Jean, what issues are you having with the brakes exactly? I’m planning out my swap and haven’t decided if I want to go with manual titlton brakes or the remote booster location.

Does the pedal just not feel right or is it an air pocket issue?

[Jean]

Haha yes ! That would be nice

[Julien]

Yes, it’s going to happen . Just need to go over details on what clears what, and what masters I’ll need etc .

hmm i think you should get the brakes working closer to stock first *shrug*

[Jean]

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for real tho

Yes, it’s going to happen . Just need to go over details on what clears what, and what masters I’ll need etc .

[Jean]

how would you say your gas mileage is with the v8?

Got about 21mpg on the 270 mile trip , keeping average speed around 75mph with a handful of full throttle sprints here and there and some stop and go .

[kronus]

bbkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk

for real tho

[jeenyus]

how would you say your gas mileage is with the v8?

[dasmanschaft012]

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[Jean]

Quick update , still tying to figure out what to do with brakes . They work, but I am still not too happy with performance and stopping power.

Car made a fairly longish round trip to Belmont to meet Kronus and Julian , 270 miles round trip without any issues . Just had to watch the running temperature as I haven’t yet installed vdo senders and gauges . Current gearing is 3.15 with undersized tires being 225/45 so my speedo is off by 5.2 mph according to gps at 80 mph.

Good news is Turner sent me a fixed oil flange adapter to install the oil temp sender, so one step closer to having accurate working oil and coolant temp gauges. The original one was drilled and tapped to wrong size, they made a bad batch but quickly rectified the issue once I reached out to them. Great company !

Traded my vinyl black seat for houndstooth back seat so it’s now matching my door panels :)

[Jean]

Oh man that doesn't sound fun. Hopefully recovery will be quick and not too painful. At some point we should meet up, but alas I'm e30 less.. dmitriy still holds the fort down nicely though

Thanks man, it's not fun at all but slowly healing up. Let's plan to meet before it starts raining !

I slept on this thread. Great build!

Thanks!

All this time I assumed you were to busy Enjoying your car!!!!
Speedy recovery Jean
Also just wondering what speed vs stopping distance were you getting from your brake set up??? Assuming you were stock on brakes except the Wilwood cylinder, time as passed since I read you thread.

Thank you! So, I am comparing stopping power and required pedal effort utilizing the same stock late model e30 front/rear calipers using stock master cylinder and pedalbox with booster Vs. manual pedal box and dual masters 5/8" size.

Stock e30 brakes are more than powerful enough for autocross, you start experiencing fade if you are doing enduro type of events where you are doing multiple laps (3-5) back to back, and usually it's solved with a better pad compound and fluid.

I just don't feel confident yet with the boosterless setup, most of it probably had to do with the brake failure with a faulty wilwood master and bad rear caliper, I essentially lost almost all braking power front and rear. So I have to revist/ re-test this and I'll report back if there is interest.

[slum dog]

All this time I assumed you were to busy Enjoying your car!!!!
Speedy recovery Jean
Also just wondering what speed vs stopping distance were you getting from your brake set up??? Assuming you were stock on brakes except the Wilwood cylinder, time as passed since I read you thread.

[robrez]

I slept on this thread. Great build!