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dimensions.
The
requirements for the rotors were that they would fit over the Europa drive
hubs, and project far enough in towards the center of the car while still
being able to fit inside the stock Lotus alloy wheels when the calipers
were bolted on. Oh, and add another requirement, that being the whole
mess had to clear the spring and shock as well. I'm here to tell
you that it's not a trivial task. I was really hoping to put a set
of Wilwood aluminum calipers on but the pads they use require a rotor with
a fairly large swept area, and the physical dimensions of the caliper require
a fairly deep hat. In addition, they don't have a handbrake incorporated
into the body of the caliper, which means you have to use one of their
mechanical spot calipers for the handbrake and that means even more fabricating.
I didn't mind the extra work required, but I didn't want to get into it
that deeply because I was trying to get the work done before the Laguna
track day, so I opted to stick with trying to find an OE caliper from a
production car.
My
neighbor has an Integra, so one day I took the opportunity to remove a
wheel from her car and measure both the rotor and caliper. It was
clear that the rotor was a good one, but the caliper stuck too far in toward
the spring and shock, so I ruled out the Integra caliper.
Through
all my scouring, I did find out that really what a Europa needs is a caliper
that sits at the 12 o'clock position. This is because the trailing
arm prevents a caliper from being placed at the 9 o'clock position (when
looking at the car from the driver's side), and all the handbrake mechanisms
that stick off the backside of most calipers prevents them from being placed
at the 3 o'clock position where they would hit the spring and shock.
But try to find a car that has a caliper on top at 12 o'clock! I
did find out that the rear of a Merkur Scorpio has calipers that would
work quite well. In addition, you can get a good variety of both
Hawk and EBC brake pads for those calipers as well.
The
calipers are placed at about 2 o'clock on the Scorpio and can tolerate
being moved a little closer to the top and still be able to be bled without
standing the car on its tail. So off to Pick-Your-Part I went. I
walked up and |
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down
all the rows and my eyes were starting to hurt from all the back and forth
scanning I was doing. But then it happened, the last car in the last
spot in the last row of the entire lot was a Scorpio! After about hour
of trying to remove the calipers with tools only quasi-suited for the job,
I had two calipers in my hands and I was feeling like I had just found
a couple of diamonds in a garbage dump. Cost? $20 each.
Once
I had the calipers it was easy to make a decision regarding the rotors.
The Integra rotors seemed to be the ones to get after noting several dimensions
and checking them two to three times. And to my surprise, the brake
pads from the Scorpio calipers fit perfectly on the swept area of the rotor!
So I went to Kragens and bought the rotors, which turned out to be the
most expensive thing to purchase up to that point. They were somewhat
pricey (considering I was in Kragens) at $45 each.
The
next step was to get the raw materials. I had sketched some crude
drawings of how I needed to attach the calipers and I needed some metal
to make it all happen. So off I went to my favorite place for aluminum,
Alco Metals in San Leandro. They have the cheapest prices for aluminum
I've seen anywhere. I bought some 6061 T-6 plate and bar stock and was
again feeling good that I had the materials.
But
after I got the calipers and the aluminum, it seemed like everything came
to a halt. Since then I've had several non-Lotus related things come
up that keep getting in the way but I'm pressing on whenever possible.
As it stands now, I've made all my calculations for dimensions and such,
and I'm fabricating what I'll refer to as the backplate. This will
bolt on to the trailing arm in the same way that the backplate for the
drum brakes bolts on, and will serve as one of the parts used to attach
the calipers to the trailing arm.
As
I said last month, I'm smart enough to not make a commitment that I'll
have the brakes on by the next track day in May, but I'm trying hard.
Hopefully next month I'll be able to report on the completion of the job,
but at the least, I'll give you an update on progress.
See
you at the next meeting.
Scott |
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As
I reported last month, I had a few minor setbacks that prevented me from
getting all my modifications in place on the Europa for the last track
day, and I had to wait until this month to tell you how far I got on the
brakes and where I currently stand.
At
the last Thunderhill track day, the brakes were so bad that they really
prevented me from going into slower corners with any confidence, which
really took a lot of fun out of the day. It all stemmed from the
fact that I removed the servos right after I bought the car because they
were leaking fluid past the seals. In order to compensate for the fact
that the servos were gone, I purchased a master cylinder from a 1991 Caterham
which had a smaller bore. It all bolted up correctly, and it really cleaned
up the engine compartment, but the pedal travel became excessively long.
Since then, it's been a bit of a pain to heel and toe because of the long
pedal travel, and the pedal has always felt too mushy as well. So
I told myself that I simply had to put disk brakes on the back. It
was something I always felt a Europa deserved anyway, and with all the
track days that we now have, it has become a necessity to improve the brakes.
I
had actually put in a little research on this topic years ago when Auto
Parts Club was still in business. I wanted to find an OE rotor that could
be used with as little modification as possible and I had taken an
entire morning one day to opening boxes of rotors right there in the store
and measuring them and making a mental note of what looked like it would
work. I remember Acura Integra rotors looking very good, so that
was really the first place I started.
Even
though I had a good feeling about the Integra rotors, I still wanted to
see if there was something else out there that might be better, so I still
kept my eyes open for alternatives. I got to the point where I was
scoping out cars in parking lots trying to find something else that would
work. I found myself at work looking under the back of cars and sticking
rulers in the spokes of wheels trying to get rough |
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