Thread: Project Sebring GT Spyder

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That was awesome work you did!
And thanks for all the pics with descriptions too!

Thanks 34. It was a little bit of a struggle. I'm ready to move on to something else!

very nice once again

Very nice work on the exhaust! I really like V bands too. I've been getting mine at racepartsolutions.com. A lot better quality than the ones on ebay IMO.

Thanks for the info 40. I'll be buying a couple more sets because I want to add a v-band to the tips. That way I won't have to weld on the pipes after they're coated. Also, will make changing tips easier.

Originally Posted by 40FordDeluxe

Very nice work on the exhaust! I really like V bands too. I've been getting mine at racepartsolutions.com. A lot better quality than the ones on ebay IMO.

Ryan, their v-band flanges in mild steel start at 3.5" up to 5". Are you using stainless? Just wondering.

No Roger, I guess most of the time I use 4" and 5". Sometimes 3". A lot are aluminum and steel for building turbo piping.

WARNING - What follows is very long post with no pictures. Just a story about a bored hot rodder.

As I said earlier, I was down with a bad back for most of August and it kept me pretty much out of the shop. While I was just sitting around, I got pretty bored and a bored hot rodder is a dangerous thing.

I decided for some reason to look into improving the brakes. May have been the meds I was on at the time. Actually, I had been thinking about brakes for a while and this down time just gave me time for my imagination to go crazy.

I had a brake kit laying around from a company called ECI. I've had this kit for quite a while and had originally thought about using it on this car. The kit uses 11" rotors on aluminum hubs and the huge cast iron GM calipers from the 70's as opposed to the smaller Metric calipers in most kits. These big GM brakes were built to stop 3 tons of the largest GM cars, so they would no doubt stop my little car just fine. Overall, I don't think it's a bad kit, but a hot rodder's mind never rests.

While I was over at a fellow rodder's shop one evening, we got to discussing brakes. He suggested that I look at adapting Mustang GT brakes to my car and it just so happened that he had a large box full of GT calipers under a work bench that were free for the using. They went home with me and a quick check showed that they would work with my ECI hub and rotor. The needed brackets appeared to be super simple. The Mustang calipers are 2 piston aluminum parts which would save some weight and they have fairly large pads.

All this was well and good and should have been the end of this story. That is.........UNTIL I got bored.

I had decided early in this project that I would be going to 17" wheels for the simple reason that high performance tire selection is better. 16" is about the smallest size that offers real hi-perf tires and there aren't many of those. 17" seems to be the sweet spot for right now. Also, 17" is the biggest size that the traditional wheel styles still look OK to my eye. Any bigger and they start to lose their proportions.

I got to thinking that if I was going to 17's, then why not go with bigger brakes, too. Besides the obvious increase in braking, the larger rotor fills up the wheel and keeps it from looking larger than it is.

So I sat about researching bigger brakes. Like any good rodder, I figured if a little improvement is good then more must be better, so I jumped over the puny 12" rotor size and went straight for something in a 13". I looked into big brake kits from some well known manufacturers, but the price for the cheapest 13" kit was well over a $1000. Nope, that wasn't going to happen. Back to the drawing board.

My next thought was to use the Mustang GT calipers I had, but go with a 13" rotor. The only rotor that size that was 1" thick (Mustang size) was a 2 piece Wilwood and that was going to cost over $500 for 2 rotors. Better I guess, but still a lot for just 2 rotors and the Wilwood rotor was really for rear use on trucks. Most 13" brakes use a 1 1/8" or thicker rotor on the front. I was concerned about the 1" rotor warping if used on the front.

So far I was 0 for 2. Oh well, I had lots of time on my hands.

Originally Posted by Hotrod46

WARNING - What follows is very long post with no pictures. Just a story about a bored hot rodder.

All this was well and good and should have been the end of this story. That is.........UNTIL I got bored.

OOOOOoooo....... I can't wait for chapter 3. but it better have pictures!

Next I looked at the brakes used on mid 90's Mustang SVT's. I actually ordered a full set of front and rear SVT brakes through my local parts house.

The SVT used 13 x 1 1/8" rotors up front with 2 piston aluminum calipers. In the rear it used 12" vented discs with calipers that had the parking brake built in to the caliper. Now we were looking good. The front disc slipped on to my ECI hub like it was made for it and the caliper brackets looked like they would be a lead pipe cinch to make. The rear brakes looked easy to adapt as well.

All was good until I noticed the front caliper overhung the wheel mounting pad by about an inch. Not good. That meant that I would need a "high hat" wheel or a thick spacer for the wheel spokes of a traditional style wheel to clear the calipers. The front stuff got boxed up and returned. I kept the rears since they looked like they would work fine. Luckily I have an understanding parts guy!

After a lot more looking and a couple of phone calls, I settled on a rotor from a mid 90's Corvette. It has more offset than the Mustang rotor. It is also 13 x 1.120 and has curved vanes for improved cooling. The downside was that it was only available in the GM 5 on 4 3/4" bolt pattern. That could be fixed fairly easy though and it would fit the ECI hub.

I was going to use the Corvette calipers, but no one could get them so I used 2012 Dodge Challenger RT parts instead. They fit the Corvette rotor thickness and the pad used all of the available rotor area. Like the Mustang SVT caliper, the Dodge parts looked like the brackets would be simple to make. They are 2 piston calipers with a large pad area. With all that friction material, pad wear on the street should be minimal.

Since the Challenger is a performance car, pads are available in several compounds. With the Challenger being a 4000+ lb car and the Mustang SVT being built for the track, these brakes shouldn't even know my little 2500 lb car is there. I now had the basis for a track capable big brake system. At this point, I'm out about $600 for both the front and rear. Not exactly cheap, but a lot cheaper than the aftermarket alternatives. The price would have been better if I had not had to pay the core charges on the calipers.

By now, my back was much better and I was anxious to get back to building a car. Good thing too. If I had been bored much longer there's no telling what I would have come up with! HMMMM...... How about inboard discs driven by half-shafts?! Nah, better just leave it there.

Ok, back to actually building something (with pictures!).

34 - I promise I'll put something up with pictures next. Just had to get the back story in!

Really nice work; this thing should scoot! Reminds me of the V8 Sunbeam Tiger.

Originally Posted by Hotrod46

34 - I promise I'll put something up with pictures next. Just had to get the back story in!

No worries. All the mixing and matching of components from so many places and you put together (what sounds like) a slick setup.

Thanks guys.

34-40 - I got over the last hurdle on the brakes tonight. The wheels I picked out actually fit! I'll get another update up ASAP.

falconvan - I have ran across 3 Tigers at various shows and knew a guy in high school that had a couple of the Alpines that the Tiger was based on. Unfortunately, he never got them on the road. They were neat little cars, closer in size to a Triumph Spitfire.

All the Tiger owners talked about how fast they were and how hot the footwells got. I can only imagine on both counts.