Well guys, after much head scratching, hair pulling and general gnashing of teeth I have finally gotten the Formula vee out on its disk brakes.
its a bit of a long one but worth telling.

There was no drama with the fronts as i had purchased T3 disks and calipers and brackets already modified to sit on the linkpin beam.
The rears were a little more irritating as i had decided (insisted) to stick with all VW clobber so I machined a pair of 4 stud rear drums down to form a drive plate and the pair of T3 front disks had the guts machined out and were bolted onto the drive plate from the rear (inside) with the long bolts protruding out as wheel studs.
It was done this way to reduce the rear track to a minimum.
trouble was that with the disks bolted to the back of the drive plate it made it a hassle to actually make a bracket to hold the caliper in the usual fashion sandwiched between the bearing retainer and the swign-axle tube itself.
The job could have been done easily with the tubes out and then the back of the mounting boss machined flat to carry the caliper bracket on the back of the boss and a simple ring machined up to replace the drum backing plate.............. I didnt feel like removing the tubes and setting them up to do this as it just adds another time consuming machining process......
The decision was made to machine further the disk mounting face down to 6mm thick and simply slip the disk over the drive plate from the outside.
So we go ahead and do it using and old tube I had laying about.
The next thing was the caliper bracket. sadly due to the way we had approached the job and in the interests of keeping the rear track as narrow as possible, the caliper had to be spaced inboard of the caliper bracket by about 12mm. rather than space the drive plate out 12mm and thereby increasing the rear track by about an inch, we made a simple ring type of caliper plate and welded on a solid chunk of 12mm plate and machined it to shape and drilled it to carry the caliper. We possibly could have simply spaced the caliper out with spacers but we were concerned with flexing and bending of the caliper plate since the caliper was now offset and that was swinging off nothing more than a chunk of 6mm mild steel plate.
bewdy all done and time for a trial fit...trouble is, unbeknownst to me at the time, I had given my mate a 36hp tube which is subtly different where the bearing sits (doesn't matter, it just is) and the caliper brackets would not fit resulting in another dash up to Hobart for another 10 minutes machining, back down home and trial fit it. Hmmm looks ok so out with the black paint can, squirt a bit around the brackets and on with the clobber.

all looks good. The thing is I set the calipers up at the rear of the car and the friggin brake lines will not make it......so, unbolt everything, clean off all the silastic from the gaskets as I dont have any spares and rotate the bracket sos the calipers sit in front of the tubes.
Cewl, brake lines fit nicely now and it looks better anyway.
The front caliper ride at the rear and the rears at the front so it looks quite trick.

K then bolt it all back up, bleed the brakes and pray for a decent pedal.
remeber that the calipers are stock T3 items but the master cyls are 5/8" in the front and 3/4" on the rears set up to work on stock type one drums and every bastard told me that I would end up with enough power to pull up a train and the car would do handstands all day with the pedal going right to the floor!

The pedal fels at least as good as standard after bleeding so fingers crossed.

Out to Baskerville and after a bit of settling down of the pads and disks, the disks were all rusty after months of laying about and the pads were simply hand ground on the side of the grinding wheel to clean them up (yeah yeah dodgy i know).
Time to give them a bit of a touch up.....well i got to say that this car now has the best brakes of any road car, race car or superkart i have ever drive driven with a short pedal, tons of feel and "feedback" allowing me to brake so much deeper with confidence with zero fade. Throttle braking was a pleasure where previously was vague and a chore and trail/braking to settle the car on corner entry and such is such a breeze now!

The pads are whatever the pads were when the rear calipers came off a stock type 3 and the fronts were the items in the calipers I got from a dude who had them on his turbocharged bug. and both sets look like old fashioned compressed cardboard pads and only the hardest and most desperate late braking at the end of the main straight managed to give me a whiff of burning pads....still no fade Yippee!
I decided not to fit anything trick at this stage as I have no baseline data from anyone else as far as pad material is concerned so i figured what the hell? Worst case would be that they just give up at the end of the straight.
The brakes are verrry.. in fact extremely powerful but completely controllable and happily there is almost no brake drag to speak of which is a real issue in an F-Vee.
I may try a slightly harder pad material to decrease the sensitivity a bees dick but only when the stock pad wear out such is the quality of braking from this setup as it stands in stock trim.
The real test will come at Symmons Plains in a couple of months where we have to pull the cars up from just over 160 kph to about 60 kph for the hairpin and there is plenty of traction on the Symmons front straight braking area so if the pads are going to struggle then they will there.
The stock drums have trouble there regardless of what trick shoe materials are used. Godd thing is that the brakes have a long run around the back straight to cool off after this abusive braking zone so as long as they dont give up here then all will be good!

I have allowed a bit of play in the front bearings to promote knockoff but the rears do still drag just a poofteenth.
I am going to look at a spring arrangement to promote further pad knockoff on the rears.

AFAIK, I am one of the very few if not the only FV'er in oz using stock T3 clobber front and rear and on a link-pin beam.

So there you go! To the doubting thomases that phooee'd my plans, you clowns can only dream about the brakes that i have got on my car now!!!!!
I dont make that claim lightly either!

L8tr Men
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Very nice dude, feels mad to do something new and different, doesn't it?

BTW, how much does your formula vee weigh?

Sure does dude!
Ummm this weekend it weighed 494 kilos with me in it and I weigh about 85 kilos suited up.
Sos about 409 with 3 litres of fuel.
its put on a bit of puddin since the new brakes and wheels went on but I am ver dubious of the scales::thumb

I guess the only thing stopping you doing this on a street car is that you would have no handbrake eh ?

John Spinks runs the same setup on his VW sports sedan in Melbourne. I drove the car up in Sydney and the brakes were UNREAL !



Welded caliper brackets :jesus.... I hope your welds are good

i have spuare eyes now .... lol but now you should be up the inside every corner!!! and man that is light!!! imagin a 2332 in a FVee!!!!!!

Umm yeah the welding is very good believe me. I didnt do it!
Otherwise I wouldnt run it.

Interesting that solid T3 stuff runs in a sports sedan without cooking!

My fronts came of a turbocharged beetle that ran out of brakes too fast and the owner upgraded to vented Porsche brakes.

As a matter of interest, our season of racing down here is now on a 5 month hiatus so as a play toy, I have set up a TP 1600 with a garret T02 turbocharger on it drawing thru a 45mm HIF SU to strap into the F-Vee.

I am only going to run it at low boost, about 8 Lb but it should produce good power at modest revs and will certainly generate good straighline speed which will be a very good test of the new brakes!

I was hoping for around 100 road wheel horsepower and that loaded into a 500 kilo package should nip along well.

I'll let yas know how that project progresses.

L8tr
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NIP!!! THATS GONNA ROCKET!!! Slicks :thumb

bwaaahahahahah dunno what I am ghoing to run as tyres yet!
I have some 14" Porsche 924 wheels so Ill look for something to strap around them.
I am going to do some club days and a few hillclimbs in this thing.
L8tr
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sweeeet as man!!

here is a set of fv brakes i'm getting made. im going to use subaru front calipers on the rear so i have hand brakes.




[Edited on 26-5-2004 by wombatone]

[Edited on 26-5-2004 by wombatone]

[Edited on 26-5-2004 by wombatone]

[Edited on 26-5-2004 by wombatone]

Mmmmmmmm, a little over confident was supervee on the weekend lol, i recon he was takin the piss outa my drivin, and i am not confident at the moment, but wow his car looks smashin with the new rims on and it does stop on a penny peice, wombatone, nice lookin kit there, i see you are still using wide 5 stud, looks like your car will be 3 inches wider?

Andy

no the track will stay the same front and rear. have not put them on the car yet, but can't wait to try them out.

Thats nice looking clobber Wombatone.

hey! Wombatone is that wombatone as in only one wombat or womba-tone? Some new kind of zorst sound!!!!!!!:thumb:thumb:thumb:thumb

wombadawombadawombadawombada......................!!!!!!!!!!

Sorry M8, I couldnt resist!! LOL
L8tr
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No it's only one wombat, had never looked at it the other way before, but good thinking.

Any idea which subie calipers you are using ?

Would they be compatible with standard beetle front discs (if the T3 disc conversion was done as discussed above ?) and calipers in terms of balance ?

tassupervee - The TO2 you are running draw through, what type of seals does it have on the turbo ? I was under the impression that you needed some special sort of carbon seal on the turbo shaft to stop fuel leaking into the oil of the turbo, thinnning it and destroying your shaft bearings ? Is this true ?

Nah dude.
Usually not a problem on any but a few turbos, that i dont think are around now.

It escapes me now which turbos were an issue but they had some kind of labyrinth front oil seal that did not like drawing thru.

I dont think it is much of a drama these doys.

L8tr
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Well now, thats good new then....

How difficult is it to set an SU up for draw through ?

Are you doing any thing extra cooling wise for the motor ?

I always used to bag these set ups until my brother bought a 79 Rx-7 with a mid 80's draw through set up on its original 12A - looks like about a T4 with a large SU on it - it goes like stink to say it politely. From memory the previous owner said it ran a mid 15 with a slipping clutch, and it felt alot faster than my old RS turbo did.

For simple and cheap, they are hard to beat, but I guess you need to be really careful setting things up ? to ensure that you have the ignition right and dont ping, and enough cooing to keep everything happy too.

If you keep the boost levels sane there are no problems at all.
Regardless of what a lot of people say, SU's are very simple to setup and even easier to keep in tune and there are a variety of needles and springs available to suit almost any application.

Drawthru application is a little limited as you cannot air to air intercool the setup but this can be successfully worked around by using a simple system of water injection.
Does the same job but is a hassle to keep the water container from running out if you use a lot of boost!!! I used a pressure switch and a large windscreen washer bottle/pump with a 0.5mm nozzle.

The advantages are simple and straightforward setup with no special fuel pumps or regulators necessary.

My old setup on a 1600 pushrod Ford was a bit problematical with fuel condensation in the manifolds and freezing of the carby on cold nights but it worked really well overall.

Certainly not as good as the blowthru setup fitted up later on but good and driveable.

Cooling wise, nup. The fan has a cold air intake and thats it.

Ignition is not really a drama at sane boost levels, say up to 10 Lb but beyond that boost retard is desireable.

I used on the Ford, a vacuum advance dashpot off a 2 litre ford that had a two way action with a "centre off" setting on zero boost and I had vac advance and boost retard above about 8 Lb boost.

I expect the kraut to be a bit pedantic when cold with fuel condensation in the manifolds but apart from that it should be fine.

L8tr M8
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Hey Wombat, I gotta ask. Are you going to use the disk brake setup same as shown in the pix with the alloy hubs on your F-Vee, save for the Suby calipers?

I hope you have specified steel hubs as the aluminium hubs are illegal to run and you will be pinged at first scrutineering.

Crikey they will be heavy tho in steel.

L8tr dude
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no not for my F-Vee. Iv'e got the origanal elfin FV 001 well its realy my old mans but he's got enough toys elfin 600FF and 620B plus a the original cheater F3. I am just about to restor the FV back to about 1974 spec as next is the 50th year of FV.

Ahhh kay then dude. Thats a relief as you would unload a heap of freight on stuff you technically cannot race with.
L8tr M8
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do you ever come across to Vic and race you fv or just race localy?

M8, its something I would just love to do.
I have been eyeing off the next Winton meeting as I could race the F-Vee and my 125cc Superkart. I have not run my kart now for some time.
However its a money thing really.
FVAA will pay towage of 2 borders which would make a fair dent on the costs to get over there but it is still a pricey exercise with time off work and such.
Add up travel on the ferry, about 800 bucks, fuel, food, entries blah blah blah and its prety pricey even with towage.

never say never tho!

L8tr
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I know what you mean, I'm still a student so I only go across to winton a couple of times a year. If you ever make it over will have to let me know.

Certainly will dude.
Its definitely on the cards, just when!
L8tr
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