James Whiting Alcon brake upgrade v Caterham high performance front brake kit

[Drumster]

JW - £640.38

CC - £675.63

 

Not an awful lot of difference in the price but with CC you do get the ventillated discs.

 

Are ventillated discs absolutely essential for mainly road use and (say) 3 or 4 trackdays a year or am I better off using the £35 difference and putting it towards the uprated master cylinder.

 

What are peoples opinions/recommendations on either of these 2 options?

 

Chris Alston

C7CAT 1800 Supersprint

R248 ....and then I jumped in

[rj]

Hmmm.

 

At a mere 200BHP I run standard brakes on Mintex 1144 front pads. I mainly use the car on track and have never had a problem. OK, my car is one of the less lardy around, but it has never ever caused a problem. Not even on the trackday when I did 300 miles - the very same day the car consumed 270l petrol

[Mcalvert]

Hi Chris,

 

No experience of the CC setup but an say that the change to the Alcon setup a fair few years ago was a revalation... Main benefit to me is that it still uses the standard disks which are cheap to change when worn, and I do not believe are in any way a limiting factor in such a light car (heavily used in sprints, hillclimbs and trackdays as you know...)

 

Changed to the race master cylinder this year - takes a bit of getting used to but after a couple of outings, a definite further improvement.

 

Call me if you want to try / discuss!

 

Michael.

[Mick Day]

JW's Alcons will work out cheaper overall as they still use the standard disc at £22.91 a pop wheras the ventilated front disc costs £141.00!

 

I don't think ventilated front discs are required on an open wheeled light car even on the track.

 

Oh & yes I'm a little biased as I do have the Alcon calipers (now with Pagid RS15 pads).

[ruff seven]

Back to back I prefer the Alcons to AP, also the Alcon caliper retains the standard master cylinder

[Willie.]

Do the Alcons have dust seals on the pistons?

 

Also...what is the consencus on Hi-Specs compared to these two?

 

Willie

[Mick Day]

Do the Alcons have dust seals on the pistons?

From JW's instruction sheet in 1999: "The calipers are without wiper seals (as the AP kit). This means inspection is recommended during the vehicles routine servicing."

[Mick Day]

Interesting in that I paid £559.29 in 1999 for my Alcons!

[Mike Biddle]

IMHO ventilated discs are wasted on the front of a Caterham, there is plenty of cooling air blowing around there.

 

The rears are another story, they can get red hot. Thats why I have 280MM solid discs at the front and the ventilated (front) discs from Caterhams big brake kit at the rear.

 

The big dia front discs make for very controlable braking, and the whole set up including Hi Spec racing four calipers is 0.5KG lighter each side than the standard front brake set up. It also (just) fits under 13" rims.

 

Also don't need the uprated master cylinder.

[bluenose]

Chris

 

In my opinion save yourself a fortune and get the Hi Spec Ultralite 4 calipers for standard discs, they are £282 for the pair on their website, although looking at my invoice from 2 years ago I only paid £182 a pair 🤔, which I think is because I had the economy silver anodised finish, which seems fine. They are very light, and work really well on my car, when it has an engine in it They use Elise pads.

 

Nick

 

 

 

Lava Orange Caterham Blackbird

 

[Willie.]

Mike (I'm honestly not following you about...)

 

Are the 280mm discs a custom made thing, or off a "standard" car if you know what I mean? I'm with you on this one, vented discs are unecessary on the front...but a bigger disc would be nice.

 

Willie

[7 wonders of the world]

Or another alternative is the Wilwood set up with the larger plain drilled discs, can be used with the standard master cyl and gives a much improved feel and bite over the OE version with 1144's.

 

I'm sure someone will be along soon to say thay don't fit withour machining - not true mine fitted perfectly

 

Too young to be old !

[Mike Biddle]

Willie, Your'e not a stalker are you?

 

Seriously, the discs also came from Hi Spec, as did the Aluminium bells to mount them to the hubs and make them sit in the centre of the calipers. In fact it was a complete kit.

 

I think I was the first to fit them to a Caterham many moons ago. They were at the time quite a bit cheaper than any other solution involving new calipers as well.

[Graham Sewell]

The reason I went for AP was that any CC specialist will have access to parts and knowledge of the setup. With the JW setup, you are limited to support from the one company.

 

BTW, if you have a live axle car, then the standard master cylinder is perfectly adequate.

 

Cheers,

 

Graham

------

Low tech luddite - xflow and proud!

 

Edited by - Graham Sewell on 21 Oct 2008 08:47:57

[Allen Payne]

I fitted the Alcon brakes at the start of this year, mainly choosen due to the cost of the replacement ventilated disks, they're very easy to fit and I've been very happy with them. They've helped solve the problem of the brake pedal gong soft towards the end of a trackday.

 

The only problem is they look far too good to bolt to the car!

[randybugger]

Alcon are fab

though have not tried the Ap

 

Tony

[Richard Price]

Allen Payne says:-

They've helped solve the problem of the brake pedal gong soft towards the end of a trackday.

Mike Biddle says:-

The rears are another story, they can get red hot.

 

I run standard brakes, with 1144's in the front, and Caterham "blue" pads in the rear, and have excellent balance. However, with trackday use, the rears get very hot (causing fluid boil, and a soft pedal), and the pads start to crumble . The fronts are fine.

 

I'd guess that the reason that the Alcons reduce the trackday soft pedal, is that the balance is shifted to the front and that the rears are not working so hard (easy to lock the fronts, but the rears are nowhere near locking), so the overall stopping power is reduced!

 

I would have said that improvements to the rears should be a higher priority than improving the front brakes.

Additionally, if you want the car to stop effectively, then suitable balance front to rear should also be a high priority! (I've currently got good balance for road, sprint and hillclimb use by pad mix).

 

Unless you can afford to experiment with caliper piston sizes, then getting a good balance is a bit "hit and miss" unless you have a balance bar adjustable bias pedal box.

 

I recall "Miraz" grafting a floor mounted adjustable pedal box into his SV a few years ago. Does anyone have experience of modifying a standard pedal box to incorperate dual master cylinders and a balance bar adjutable bias set up?

[ruff seven]

Having seen most Braking systems, I have never liked Hi-Spec many issues with them,time and time again, ok as a budget brake, that was 8 years ago, no I had some discs from them last year for a yank race car and the two front discs were a different diameter?, Willwoods again poor in my opinion, why bother when you have superior manafactures such as AP and Alcon.

[Mike Biddle]

Richard, your assesment is correct and that was the problem I set out to resolve, but I wanted to have max possible CONTROLABLE braking effort on all four wheels without locking the rears first. Radical changes at both ends were the answer.

 

I do have a brake bias valve in the circuit to the rears but have never had to use it, the fronts always lock first and thats actually bad news because I don't know how much of the rear braking potential I am actually using. That could be because the car may be over tyred at the front, and one the upcoming fine tuning tasks is to try a narrower set of tyres on the front and see what happens. If that does'nt work then I will plug the bias valve into the front cicuit and play again with both sets of tyres.

 

Ruff, it's strange how some people have had a bad experience with Hi Spec, I have always found them to be very good and the product of gfood quality. I've had those front brakes for 9 yeras now with no probs.

 

My answer to your question why is because willwood and alcon didn't make what I wanted at the time.

 

Edited by - Mike Biddle on 21 Oct 2008 11:55:23

[DaveK]

Richard

 

We used the Ap 4 pot/vented fronts and the 2 pot solid rears on the vx hillclimb car.

 

Bias pedal box was quite easy to fit using Ap cp4400 bulkhead fitting master cylinders. IIRC we used a 0.625 and a 0.7 master cyls, the standard pedal was modified to accept the balance tube.

 

The pedal travel was minimal, but also quite hard due to the reduced leverage as an effect of where we fitted the balance tube, it suited me fine though. When set up correctly you could lock all 4 wheels with the fronts locking fractionally before the rears

 

We managed to fit a hydraulic clutch setup on the VX car in there as well.

 

 

Dave

 

[Richard Price]

Dave,

Have you got any photos 🤔

 

 

[DaveK]

Richard

 

I've got some somewhere, but don't hold your breath as it was 8 years ago !!

 

Dave

[Steve T]

Slight hijack

 

I fitted the 4 pot Alcons and M1144's to the front last year, great improvement.

 

I still have the standard rears with the original pads, is there an improved rear pad choice that would suit better with the M1144's in the front which increased front braking quite a lot. Maybe using M1144's in the standard rear callipers ?

 

Steve

 

Now with DVA Power! 191bhp and 150.9 lbft torque.

 

My Pictures

[Willie.]

Mike... I can see you 😬

 

Thanks for the info on Hi-Specs & discs. I have a pair of HS 4pots on my Locost, which is gathering dust. May relieve it of them.

 

Willie

[elie boone]

Richard, first i went the Dave K route but was not really happy with my work, now i have a Wilwood pedalbox with the hydraulic clutch on a 1999 L X chassis.

 

If you need a pic. send me a PM with your mail adres.