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Old 10-23-2011, 10:13 AM
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Default The 14 Car Performance Therapy Project Rushforths, Baers, Yokohamas, and more



As some of you know, I won the grand prize in the Performance Therapy Online Photo Contest a while back with a photo my bud John Hendrick took at the Sebring road race track. Some of the prizes awarded included a Set of Yokohama tires, a set of Rushforth wheels, and a set of Baer brakes which are going on my 70 Firebird.

I'm going to try to provide a lot of information in this thread that may help others learn about these products and installation and since many on this forum have much more experience than I do, feel free to chime in and tell me if there's a better way to do certain things if you know of one. DISCLAIMER : I am not an expert in suspensions, Tires, Wheels, or Brakes but will try to offer information based on my previous experiences (including mistakes lol) and what I learn along the way installing these products.

My old Yokohamas were worn out so that worked out perfect. I'd been holding off for a few years on bigger brakes because that required bigger wheels AND tires! The combined expense was out of my budget so I just kept running the stock style single piston front/drum rear brake setup with 17" wheels and some sticky Yokohama AO32 tires. I had a lot of problems keeping brakes on the car at road courses and kept making improvements with braided lines etc. until I got to the point of running a dedicated set of track brakes using race pads and custom made race shoes with one set of rotors and drums and a completely different set of pads, rotors, shoes, and drums for the street. I've been switching everything and replacing the fluid before and after every track event. The rotors got so hot on track I would crystalize them and have to get new ones before the next track event.

So after checking all of my possible options for wheel and tire sizing and talking to Jay at Rushforth about available wheel sizes, I decided on 18" X 10" wheels all around and the newer version of the Yokohama DOT R tires I had before. They are the AO48 in 285 and 295 18's. The 285's up front are going to be a little tighter fit than the 275s I had and will reduce the turning radius a little but I think on track they'll be great in the corners. 295's on the rear will be no problem since I had 315's before and they just rubbed a tiny bit, only on track at full tilt when I hit a corner curb too hard and the rear moved the leaf spring setup enough to touch (they were really stuffed in there close). So the 295's will give me a little extra room which eliminates the immediate need for some type of panhard bar or other device I'd been considering to limit rear movement.

Before Todd at Baer passed away he really hooked me up with some killer brakes! I talked to him about what I did with my car and explained that although the car's pretty and photographic, I'm more about function and that I'd rather have brakes that worked well on track than something pretty. I'm no brake engineer so I left it up to him and he went way out of his way, and beyond the call, to hook me up with a set of 14" slotted rotors (all around) with their 6P 6 piston calipers, parking brakes, and an adjustable proportioning valve for the rears. To top it off they sent them in their "Nickle" finish!

I've been daily driving The 14 Car on the street and no track days in a while so there's no numbers etc. on it now, but here's a "before" pic. I can't order the wheels until I get the brakes installed so I can measure for the backspacing required. I'll keep updating as I progress with the install.

http://www.baer.com/products/calipers/index.php
http://www.rushforthwheels.com/
http://www.yokohamatire.com/tires/advan_a048.aspx

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70 Firebird Esprit, 400 TA clone type "The 14 car"
lab-14.com
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Old 10-23-2011, 10:16 AM
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Tires are the limiting factor to any suspension upgrades that increase the handling capabilities of the car since the contact patch, compound, tread pattern, and casing design combine to provide the connection of the vehicle to the pavement. For a car like mine that gets used on road tracks we use a wide, soft compound tire, that has big tread blocks. It is a type of tire designed for track days on full size road courses that is still barely streetable and carries a DOT # so it's legal. These are road track tires which require a certain amount of heat in them to function at their best so the first lap or two on track brings the tires up to temperature. Tires designed for auto-X are different and do not require the warm up that road track tires do. Our first couple laps is like a drag car warming up slicks to get them sticky.

A wide tire gives a bigger footprint and with the larger contact patch comes increased traction. At 285 mm front and 295mm rear these tires are almost a foot wide, about double what the stock factory tires were! Double the width, double the grip = double the FUN!!

These Yokohamas have a treadwear rating of 60 which is very low and indicates a soft compound so you wouldn't expect to get a lot of street miles out of them. I don't care about longevity. Chances are, the tires will start to dry and loose their grip in a 3-4 years before I wear them out anyway. At least thats what happened with my last set and 6 years is max tire life. Yokohama makes these AO48 tires in 2 different types. One for lightweight cars and one for heavier cars like mine. The difference in construction helps keep the tires in the optimum heat range for the rubber compound to provide the most grip. If I ran the tires designed for the lightweight cars on mine, the tires would overheat, and become "greasy" by the middle of a track session. Tire life would be greatly reduced.

The tread design on these tires is designed to channel water in rain if necessary (road course track days do not stop for rain) and keep the tire DOT legal. The large blocks provide a very stable connection to the pavement. The taller and narrower the tread blocks are, the more the blocks can move (squirm) and on road tracks cars with tires like that are limited by the tires.

The rounded casing design of these tires provides a good contact patch and smooth transition from full braking to cornering loads and again when rolling back into the throttle through the turn with a predictable feel. Tires like these don't squeal around corners so the driver has to pay more attention to how the car "feels" through the steering wheel and seat of the pants.

http://www.yokohamatire.com/tires/advan_a048.aspx

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Old 10-23-2011, 10:21 AM
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Before I won the contest I'd been trying to just have as much fun as I could while retaining an original type single piston front disc/rear drum brake system. Of course I keep replacing the calipers, wheel cylinders, master cylinder etc. and I installed braided flex lines to replace the stock rubber ones. I tried a number of different pads and shoes over the years and the most recent and best setup was having Porterfield race pads on the front with custom made Raybestos race shoes in the rear. I kept dedicated street pads, shoes, drums, and rotors and swapped everything and bled the brakes before and after every track day. A lot of work, but the race setup worked so much better on track than stock stuff it was worth it. The biggest drawback was that I would get the rotors so hot on track because of the race pads that I'd crystalize them and have to junk them after a track weekend. Now I'm going big time!

As mentioned in my first post, I talked to Todd at Baer for a while one afternoon. After discussing what I do with the car and my personal opinions on things like aesthetics. He came up with the brake package you see below. There's a few reasons for the way I got certain things that I think might be interesting to others considering big brake upgrades. I told Todd I didn't care what color the calipers were so they sent me Nickle plated!

Although the car's pretty and photographic, I am more concerned with the function, performance, and simplicity of things for The 14 Car than I am about the "look". If a couple sponges rubbing on a balsa wood disc would stop the car faster I'd be fine with that, no matter how silly it looked. So given that attitude, some things that the more show oriented guys get in a brake package I have no yearning desire for. Zinc wash rotor coating is a good example. My brakes are going to be used to their limit and so the wheels, spindles, calipers etc. get covered with brake dust at every track event. I clean everything often but I don't need the "show" look of the zinc. Drilled rotors are another type of option that I don't really need. There's a lot of opinions about drilling rotors that I'm not going to go into here, but for me, I'm good with slotted or solid rotors.

The big rotors are a lot of rotating mass and they will require more power to get them up to speed out of every turn. (read, slow my car down) That mass is also what helps dissipate all the heat generated while slowing the car repeatedly on track. Now, while you might think that the car accelerating slower out of corners will make the lap times higher, the ability to stay at full speed on the other end of the straight longer before braking more than makes up for the slower corner exit acceleration. As an example if I was going 140 MPH at the end of a straight I'd cover a lot of ground in a short period of time. If I can start braking a hundred feet later than I did with the old brakes the loss of time getting up to speed is more than made up for by the time saved traveling at full speed for an extra hundred feet!

The rotors are a 2 piece design and the calipers are BAER 6P asphalt track 6 piston design with BOTH brake pads moving! (inside joke). The fronts come on a dedicated spindle for the 2nd gen F bodies and the rears are designed to work on the Ford style Moser tapered bearing housing ends I have on my 10 bolt GM rear. These calipers use a modern Corvette design pad so replacements are readily available in different compounds.







The rear brakes are also 14" rotors with the 6P calipers and include the park brake that fits into the center section of the 2 piece rotors. There will also be an adjustable proportioning valve I'm hoping to mount within reach while driving to fine tune the amount of work the rear brakes do.





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Old 10-23-2011, 10:31 AM
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I decided a while back that since I'll have the car out of commission for a while I'm going to expand on the project of brakes, wheels, and tires. I've been saying I was going to do several other things to the car and so I'm going to take the opportunity to do everything at once. On top of the brakes, wheels tires I'll attempt the following. We'll see how it goes, and hope I don't slide down the slippery slope too far!

1. Replace core support. Mine was rusted out when I bought the car 20 years ago. None were available repro or used, so I fabricated a new bottom section so the radiator wouldn't fall on the ground (literally). I got a good used one from Arizona Rust Free about 6-7 years ago but never put it in. So the plan is to strip, paint, and install it.

2. Replace hood. My hoods not a real TA hood, just a stock hood with a hole cut in it. A guy in an Alfa Romeo lost an engine at Palm Beach International just as I was about to pull out to pass him. Some chemical from his engine damaged the paint on my hood and shaker scoop. So now's the time to paint and install the new hood. I bought a nice TA hood maybe 10-12 years ago but never installed it because I'd need to paint it. I'll have the paint out for.......

3. Repaint front spoiler. I hit a chunk of 2 X 4 that flipped up on a highway south of New Orleans while on vacation that took a chunk of paint out of the spoiler. Then I started going fast enough on track so the air pressure was folding the center of the spoiler straight down which the paint didn't like so it started peeling. If you've seen pics of my car with stickers on the front spoiler it was to hide the peeling paint ! LOL

4. Spoiler extension and splitter. Aerodynamic benefit and the supports will keep the stock spoiler from flexing so much at speed. Another thing I've been saying I'll get to. Since I'll have everything apart and be painting, now's the time. I've been working on a design, will try to make it a reality.

5. Custom front valance. Already have a spare valance to work with that's better than the one on my car. Gotta design in mind, will try to make it a reality.

6. Rear diffuser. Again I have a design in mind and will see how it works out.

7. Install NOS Hooker side pipes. I bought a set of side pipes a couple years ago to replace the ones on my car. The ones on my car are limiting performance because they are not headers to side pipes, but regular exhaust manifolds with custom bent exhaust tubing to the side pipes which have a fake "header" section on the front of them. They look cool (to me) but limit the engines performance to reach my speed goals. Drawback is the new pipes are black and so the "look" of the car will need to change. I'm considering a couple options.

8. Install foilers. Foilers are wheel well flares like the ones TAs come with but they fit behind each wheel. I bought a set about 10 years ago but never painted them or installed. Since I'll already have the paint out..... However there may be a glitch in the installation because the new side exit headers that came with the sidepipes may interfere with the front ones, we'll see.

9. Install trunk filler panel and trunk lid. Again, parts I bought long ago and never installed. My current deck lid is a stock non TA one I drilled holes in to install a spoiler and I have a better filler panel to use now.

10. Put the car on a diet! I added 200 lbs. of roll cage and adding a spoiler extension, splitter, and diffuser will add more. I would like to figure out some ways of getting that back out of the car. It weighed about 3500 lbs before the safety equipment install and I'd like to get back near that weight if possible. So while I've got the car torn apart I'm going to look for some places to do some automotive liposuction.

So I started the project by getting out the core support and stripping it. Gave it a good scraping to remove undercoating, wire brushed the big stuff off, wire wheeled it to get most of the heavy remaining deposits, and then sandblasted it with an Eastwood outdoor style blaster and wire wheeled it some more. I'll sand it before more work is done to it. I'm going to add some metal to stiffen it up where it attaches to the sub frame.

The 14 Car is a sort of streetfighter/G-machine, NOT a show car. So since there's a very real possibility I may ball the car up eventually I'm not trying to make things "perfect". For parts like the core support here's no smoothing/filling etc. getting done. The hours invested would be wasted if I make it look like piece of crumpled aluminum foil by smacking a tire wall or something.







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Old 10-23-2011, 10:33 AM
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Paint day for the core support after waiting through a week of wind. I used some Chassis Saver which is a single stage rust encapsulating type of paint by Magnet Paint.

Here's my high tech mixing station! I use a HVLP jamb gun for jobs like this. The biggest hassle is making a way to hang the gun so the cup stays upright. READ DIRECTIONS (and follow them) for any type of paint.





Here's my spacious booth complete with a tropical theme. Banana, Plantain, Papaya, Mango, Avacado, Yuca (Cassava), Areca Palm, and Almond background.



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Old 10-23-2011, 10:36 AM
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Before tearing the car apart I wanted to make some patterns for the spoiler extension and splitter I'm going to fabricate. Once the car is up off the ground it will be difficult to check ground clearance etc.

I placed a piece of cardboard about 3" off the ground under the front end and used a plumb bob to create an outline roughly the same as the nose of the car. From what I've read, the ideal splitter lines up with the front of the car. So I figured I'd use that as a starting point and shorten if I feel like it later.



With the height and outline done I made a piece approximately the size I'll need for the spoiler extension.



Test fitted the foilers for the back of the rear wheel openings. It's going to take some time to fit them nicely. Not sure if I'll be able to use the ones behind the front wheels because the side exit headers may be too close. We'll see.




So after shuffling cars around to make the garage available without being crowded I've started taking things apart. I swapped out the 2.41 rear I normally use for street, road courses and Land speed racing for the 3.73 rear I use for drags. Then stuck the Mickey Thompson ET Streets on there so if I need to roll the car around while I'm working on the rear to install the Baers I'll be able to. I need to upgrade the rear axles to 1/2" wheel studs to match the front so the axles have to come out anyway so I can line everything up nice and straight in a drill press. I figured I might as well just pull the whole rear to make it easier to work on.

1st thing, get the car in the garage ALONE!



I work alone so swapping rears is a little tricky. First thing was battery disconnect and suck the fluid out of the master cylinder since all the brakes are coming out. Then remove the swaybar brackets, brakes, and disconnect the brake line flex hose and park brake cables. Then remove one shock and lower plate and swing the other lower shock plate out of the way. I carefully jack the rear while balancing it and shift it to the side without the shock, tip it down then shift it back the other direction by rolling the jack. This way I don't need to remove the springs.





After swapping rears and removing front wheels so I can work on swapping the spindles.

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Old 10-23-2011, 04:09 PM
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Good stuff man, keep us posted. Looking forward to seeing the new stuff and how everything turns out for ya.
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Old 10-26-2011, 08:55 AM
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I was stuffing a lot of tire in stock wheelwells up front with the 275's on 9.5" rims and now I'm going to try 285's on a 10", so backspacing is important. I could touch the swaybar with the tires at full lock and it rubbed the powdercoating off. I'm concerned about backspacing when ordering the new wheels so I haven't ordered them because I was afraid if the new brake combo moved the wheel flange out I'd be in big trouble. So I figured better to install the new brakes and spindles and measure before ordering. I will loose some more turning radius and plan on installing limiters on the lower control arms. The types of driving I do with this car don't require extremely sharp turns.

With the original spindle and rotor still in place I used a straight edge to put some tape markers on the car and floor so I could line up the new combo and see if there was a difference.





The first step involved in swapping out the spindle assemblies is removing the brake lines at the frame mounts where the flex tubes end. Since I replaced the flex lines with braided about a bit over a year ago I figured everything should come apart easy, right? WRONG! LOL The passenger side gave me a hassle so I did what anyone irritated would do, yup, I got a big pair of linesmans pliers and cut the hardline. AHAHAHA. I make new brake lines all the time so no big deal. Just would have been nice not to have to make that one from the line lock solenoid over to the passengers side since it was fairly new.



So after making quick work of the stubborn brake line I moved on to removing the spindles with everything attached. The Baers come all set up on a new spindle so all thats necessary to swap the setups is loosening, separating, and then unbolting the tie rod end and upper/lower ball joints. After putting the new assembly in place I checked my tape marks and was pleasantly surprised to find no change in the wheel flange position so I can easily calculate backspacing for the new Rushforth wheels based on the old wheels.



Because I'm concerned about weight I weighed the stock vs. Baer spindle assemblies fully loaded. I got out the bathroom scale and picked up one of each and weighed myself and a piece to be sure I was in the accurate range of a bath scale. I was shocked to find that the new ones were actually LIGHTER than the smaller stock rotor size ones! In disbelief I then piled both old ones on the scale then both new ones. Sure enough! The Baer assemblies with giant rotors are about 1-1 1/2 lbs LESS than stock for each assembly! While the rotating mass is heavier because of the much bigger rotor the overall unsprung weight is lower so in theory there would be some slight handling improvement and a beneficial loss of front end weight helping the front/rear weight bias.
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Old 10-26-2011, 07:05 PM
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As I mentioned in my last post the 275 17's would hit the Hotchkis sway bar at full lock. The new 285 18 Yokohama tire is 10mm wider and will be on a 1/2" wider rim. The "extra" tire has to go to the inside because I was already at the limit on the outside and moving the tire out at all would result in the tire rubbing the fender lip under max compression.

Having the tire hit the swaybar could potentially be very dangerous. As an example, if I was on track and trying to control a situation where some or all of the wheels were at their limit of adhesion and a front tire contacted the swaybar it might cause that wheel to skid. That would be BAD! Lets say the rear end got loose in a corner and I was trying to correct by steering into the slide. The inner front tire (with less weight on it and therefore less grip) would contact the swaybar possibly locking up that wheel, then I'd probably be 4 wheels off before I even knew what happened!

So here's the rub.



Below is the stock limiter that the spindle bumps into at the end of it's turning radius. The one on the left side limits left turns (right wheel hitting swaybar) and vice versa for the right.



I decided to drill and tap the stock limiter for a 5/16" bolt or threaded rod and use that as a variable adjuster so I can retain as much turning radius as possible. Once the new Rushforth/Yokohama combination is in place I'll adjust the turning radius limiters and lock the adjusters (probably spot weld) so they can't move or loosen up and fall out. "Why 5/16" bolts?" you might ask. Well, 1/4" might bend, and 3/8" would be hard to drill and tap due to the geometry of the stock limiters, also this is a pre metric car so no metric stuff if possible.



Pics below show an Allen head bolt in screwed into the limiter but I haven't decided what will be used for sure yet. The final pic is looking down from the top so you can see how the spindle travel is limited.



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Old 11-06-2011, 04:24 PM
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I like where you are going with your set-up keeping it cost friendly(even though you have gotten some good parts "donated", wish i was so lucky), keep up the post to let us know how it works out. Good luck and good job..
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