Diy Brake Upgrades?

[jlenko]

Ok, I'll start off with "I have a Cavalier"... but it's got an 04 Alero IRS bolted onto it, so it's part N-body now Soon I will be doing the front swap to match the bolt pattern, so I'll be swapping to the N-body ball-joint, knuckle, front brakes, etc.

My experience with "Baer" brakes on the Cavalier has been pretty good. I figured out a long time ago that they were just stock parts off a bigger car (the Cavalier uses the Corvette rear brakes, 89-93 models, with an adapter plate that gets bolted between the hub and the trailing axle. Even uses the stock e-brake cables, nifty!). I imagine the same is true for the N-body Baer kits.. but of course, I don't know anyone around here that has a set (yet).

As far as upgrading the front brakes... I'm aware of the F-body 2-piston caliper swap... and the W-body 12" rotor swap.... I'm thinking also about pursuing the 12.7" C6 front rotor swap... we'll see

But the rear has me stumped... since I haven't thought about upgrading them just yet.... anyone on here done anything with them yet? I see one person with the Baer kit, but I'll head over to grandamgt.com to read the thread on that one... anyone else? Anyone fabricated their own upgrade kit yet? What parts did you use? What did you do about the e-brake?

[Cliff8928]

I'm currently exploring using the rear F-Body brakes. I should be able to find out if they will work or not later this week. The rotor has the same drum-in-hat parking brake as the Alero has, maybe a little bit larger, but very similar.

The front swap can also use the C5 calipers, that's what i used on mine. It may take a little more modification to get the 12.7" rotors to work. I think you *might* be able to get a stock caliper and bracket from a Grand Prix GXP and use that (they have 12.7" rotors IIRC )

Oh, and the F-Body and W-Body rotors are exactly the same.