wilwood rear brakes with internal parking brake

[gregkring]

Been working on this for awhile. I previously had 81 280zx discs which worked fine, but were plain, ugly, nonvented, and the parking brake cable routing was poor.

I have looked at all the popular conversions. while they all work fine, they floating caliper style definitely aren't sexy. All the fixed calipers either have no parking brake (unsafe and inconvenient) or have a separate spot caliper that is not my preference. There is the one "rally style" modified wilwood out there, but I have no idea if it actually works well. 

 

I wanted to go with the internal parking brake inside the rotor hat. Very clean and effective. I started with a Wilwood parking brake kit originally designed for the old Ford Broncos. They have a very similar backing plate to hub offset as our Z cars and the bore diameter and bolt pattern is close to bolt to the rear spindle. I could not use the whole kit as the rotor bolt patterns are wrong and the caliper piston sizes are wrong as well for the lighter Z car. 

 

 

Clearances worked out really well. I actually mounted them upside down so the parking brake lever is on the bottom. This places it almost exactly in the same spot as the factory ones for the old drum brakes so the routing is perfect. Have to make a new bracket to mount the cables, but I can use the same mounting holes as factory.

 

 

 I ended up ordering wilwood "blank" rotors so I could drill the correct bolt pattern. I also had to order their blank centering rings as they don't offer those already cut for the nissan hub diameter. Luckily my father in law has an awesome lathe and knocked that out quickly. This allows the rotors to stay hubcentric like they need to. A 5 lug conversion would have made it able to order off the shelf rotors, but I am not ready for new rims yet.

 

 

12 inch rotors .81 thick, vented of course. Nice fixed caliper that will match my 6 pistons front ones pretty well.

 

 

 Backside view. Had to do a lug mount as I couldn't find a radial mount for anything smaller than a 13 inch rotor. Radial mount does open up more caliper choices, but I just see no reason for the extra work at this time. You can also see I am still running the old ZX CV shafts. Did this 20 years ago before all the modern motorsports and stuff came about. Still working good.

 

 

Next step is to start finish up the front. I have a set of JSK rotor adapters so that made life easier. Picked 12 inch 1.25 thick slotted rotors. Later on I can always go to a 13 inch, but it would be way overkill (as if this isn't already?)

Already fitted 6 piston wilwoods by using C5 corvette radial caliper mounts. Still need to redrill and add a small spacer to make it perfect.

Edited November 14, 2016 by gregkring

[RB26powered74zcar]

Nice job!!  Surprised this hasn't been done already. Like I said..... Awesome!! 

[ArizonaZ]

Do you have a part number or link to the wilwood kit that you used?

[softopz]

Great write up! thats what HBZ is all about. I am too interested in year of bronco and rotor part number.

[Trevor]

deleted for clarity

Edited November 30, 2016 by Trevor

[gregkring]

http://www.wilwood.com/BrakeKits/BrakeKitsProdRear.aspx?itemno=140-13322-D

close. That kit is for the 2.36 offset brakes. Our cars have short offsets, closer to 1.9 inches. You need to use the parking brake kit from the 2 inch offset bronco kit.

http://www.wilwood.com/BrakeKits/BrakeKitsProdRear.aspx?itemno=140-13733-DR

 

You can only use the parking brake kit portion, unless you have 5 lug hubs. The rotors that come in the kit are multiple pattern 5 lug ones. No room to redrill for 4 lug. I used the wilwood "blanks" instead.

http://www.wilwood.com/Rotors/RotorProd.aspx?itemno=160-6868

You can also get drilled and slotted versions. I was wanting just slotted, but couldn't find it.

 

Definitely not a bolt on kit, but totally doable.