The previous brake setup on my 1969 mustang convertible consisted of Wilwood 4 piston calipers with 11″ diameter and .810″ thick solid faced rotors. I was also using EBC Yellow Stuff pads (GREAT pads but man they created a lot of dust)
This new Wilwood kit consists of 6 piston calipers with a 12.88″ diameter and 1.10″ thick slotted rotors. Wilwood recommends at least a 17″ sized wheel for these brakes.
https://www.summitracing.com/parts/w…/model/mustang
The rear brake kit remained the same, an SSBC single piston disc kit. The master cylinder also remained the same, a ’74 maverick 15/16th bore.
After unboxing, one thing immediately stuck out: everything on this kit is MASSIVE. With that being said, these brakes are also considerably heavier than the kit that came off. I wish I had weighed the previous kit to see how much more the new kit weighs; even a few pounds of rotational mass makes a big difference.
Assembly was fairly straight forward, however the instructions tell you to install the rotor hub before putting on all the caliper mounting brackets. The caliper bracket consists of three pieces, a plate that bolts to the spindle, a spacer, and the caliper bracket itself.
There is no way of installing the bolts for the rest of the caliper bracket components once the hub is installed, so you need to get all of that bolted up BEFORE the rotor hub goes on.
The instructions say to use red Loctite on the rotor hat bolts with an option to add safety wire as well. I chose to just use the Loctite as I never had any problems with these bolts coming loose with any of the other Wilwood kits I’ve assembled.
Per Wilwood’s instructions: “…for an added measure of security, the bolts may be safety wired using standard .032 inch diameter stainless steel safety wire as shown in Figure 4″ (Wilwood). In my opinion, this is a little vague on Wilwood’s end.
**NOTE: None of the other Wilwood kits I’ve installed had bolts with provisions for safety wire either.
You’ll notice bright paint dabs on every bolt, this is so I can visually see if any bolt has budged.
The other side went much smoother as I already knew how many shims to use (or not use in my case) along with how the kit went together.
Pardon the mess
I also ended up swapping the front brake hoses to Wilwood’s braided stainless kit.
First impressions after driving? It’s a little hard to remember- my head flew into the windshield after slamming the brakes.
The bite on this new brake kit is absolutely mental, hands down the best stopping car I’ve driven now. The combination of a lightweight car with large, big biting brakes makes for some serious stopping power. The other occupants in the car were rather upset as they did not have anything to hold onto during braking (They were not given a warning either). I have about a few thousand miles on the new brakes kit, I’ve yet to have a bolt budge with the red Loctite. The BP-10 brake pads that were supplied in the kit produce very little dust compared to the EBC pads that were on my old brake setup.
So, to answer the age old question, YES: bigger IS better with brakes.
