Caliper brackets

enjenjo · January 29, 2020, 10:16:01 PM

On this Jag front end I am doing I am using GM calipers and rotors. The ones I picked are from a 76 Malibu. The Malibu rotor fit by using the Jaguar wheel bearings, on one of them an alternate cup, and shortening the spindle by .300".

For the caliper bracket My original idea was to make it from scratch. But looking in the Speedway catalog they had one that would work with a little trimming. And the price was $9.99 each. So, look at the pictures and I'll show you how I did it so far.

chimp koose · January 30, 2020, 08:34:02 AM

Those are the same brackets I used to make the caliper mounts for my econoline spindles . Originally for a weld on caliper bracket for a 3" tube rear end , and for $9.99 each , you can't beat em .

jaybee · January 30, 2020, 09:47:43 PM

Nice. Do you ever find an application for which the bracket is really complicated, or does a bracket normally land close to the same plane as a drum backing plate?

chimp koose · January 31, 2020, 07:52:59 AM

In my case the bracket needed to be spaced back about 1/2". I made up some threaded spacers in the lathe so the fasteners pass through the spindle, thread through the spacer, pass through the bracket and are fastened by a nut . I may make it into a castle nut deal .

enjenjo · January 31, 2020, 10:41:32 AM

Quote from: "jaybee"Nice. Do you ever find an application for which the bracket is really complicated, or does a bracket normally land close to the same plane as a drum backing plate?

I made a post last night answering this, but somehow it is no longer here. In most cases a slight bend or a spacer is all that is needed to align the caliper bracket to the rotor like this one. In other cases the bracket can get quite complicated when there is a minimum of room. Even on a simple bracket it can take some time to get it right.

I made an adapter to pressurize the caliper with air to hold it to the rotor, and use a strip of 1/8" rubber to space the top of the caliper off the rotor.

jaybee · January 31, 2020, 10:49:37 PM

That makes sense. work from where the caliper needs to be and work back to the spindle.

enjenjo · February 13, 2020, 07:28:44 PM

Well, after spending several hours getting the brackets to fit, I assembled the spindles yesterday, A...N...D... I am not happy with it. So after spending most of today thinking about it, I decided to start over. I was working on making fuel tank mounts today.

The calipers fit, and they will function okay, but I am not happy that the steering arms have to be removed to change the pads, and the caliper bracket had to be notched at the bottom to clear the steering arm. I'll go out there tomorrow and rethink it.

enjenjo · February 14, 2020, 11:24:40 PM

I went out today and started over from scratch. I went back to a bare spindle assembly and measured everything to the nearest .030". I then took all these measurements, and made a new CAD template, and laid out all the holes. I then compared my new template to the bracket I had already made, and there was less than 1/8" difference from the old one to the new one, and that was not enough to make the difference I wanted. So I guess I will use the old ones. Except I hunted nearly an hour and couldn't find the left hand bracket I made. I'll find it, but that was really frustrating. :x

kb426 · February 15, 2020, 09:16:40 AM

The idea god doesn't always know where to find us.

GPster · February 15, 2020, 09:30:41 AM

Maybe you could back-up two steps and use different discs and calipers. GPster