240 4pots and carlton vented discs (again)

[nic 360gt]

Mate if you think bout it this way, My brackets are made out of steel the same thickness as the lobes on the strut leg so thye are very unlikely to break!!

.... just because the material you used is the same thickness as those lobes on the strut leg does not mean "thye are very unlikely to break!!"

Infact it means absolutely nothing!

I never did any force calculations

but i’m sure volvo did so all i have done is make brackets from same material. Steel!!

What you need to understand is that you've changed the design of the caliper mounts, so the calculations Volvo did when designing them are now completely irrelevant.

Also what’s this magical material "steel" that you speak of? Don’t tell me you’re also presuming that it's of the same material properties of that used by Volvo?

Some things to think about:
* Your running some wide gripy rubber so brake lockup threshold with be increased.
* Thanks to the brake upgrade you now have a braking system that can exert a much larger retarding force over that of the stock braking system.
* The caliper is now mounted further away from the centre of the stub axil

Can you start to see that the force on the stock caliper mounting points is going to be greatly increased?

Therefore, without knowing the properties of the material you used, the design of the bracket and force acting on it you should not make such dangerous presumptions. You're dealing with arguably the most important safety aspect of the car, it’s not a place for uneducated guessing.

Now I’m not saying that the caliper mounts will fail or not, I just wont for people to understand that is no were near as simple as drilling a few holes in some "steel" and slapping on some big calipers.

So lets just hope that you've fluked the design and that Volvo over engineered the stock mounts.

[classicswede]

I do get you point with this but when you look at most of the brake upgrade kits available from the likes of willwood that is all they are doing.
The volvo bracket is over engineered as with most of teh parts.

I personaly have no issues with what Adam has done and it does seem to work very well.

The std brakes on a 340 in good order do stop very well. The problem the do have is when you drive like a tit they will over heat. What I would like to creat is a vented disc that will bolt on and use a std available caliper to work with it.
The rear end brakes are a pain as the mechanism seizes up so a disc conversion would be a good idea as well.

[jtbo]

Brakes are parts that I would not by if manufacturer has not done stress tests.

If you put disc to outside you are creating more leverage and how this is going to affect strength being enough?

Even small change can make huge impact on strength, for example drilling extra holes to brake disc is something I would not do without force calculations.

[340GLT]

@ nic 360gt
I myself am studying motorsport engineering and fully inderstand that steel is not steel, but for the sake of this arguement the steel i used was stronger than that on the strut leg. I used the word steel as its easier for people to understand. No point in stating exact type of steel used.
And not knowing anything of your background etc i'm not going to judge you, but what i will say is that i fully understand the physics of such modifications and extra stresses caused. But i have enough previous experience, to know the changes i made are not significant enough to do stress calculations.
Again like i said without judging you but i really hate people who will state facts and figures but have no phiscial experiance in making components and actually using them, as i'm sure you know that physics are theories. And that not all work in the real world. I really dont want this to turn into a heated arguement as it would be pointless.
As for the strength factor, if it concerned me in any way shape or form i would not drive my car every single day and definately would not carry any passengers. If you look at my conversion thread, you will see that the conversion works for a start, and that prcautions WERE taken to make the conversion safe.
Adam

[foggyjames]

prcautions WERE taken to make the conversion safe.

Extra R-Sport logos for strength

cheers

James

[340GLT]

Less of it foggy. lol

[jtbo]

Less of it foggy.

Are we bit sensitive

At least I did not meant it way that your work would not stand stress, I just would like to point out that to be sure only way to be sure is to have calcs done.

Scientific approach so to say

[foggyjames]

Haha.....Jani quotes for truth Adam knows I'm only winding him up...anyway, I picked up a pair of said logos from him on Sunday, so I can't talk

cheers

James

[nic 360gt]

Adam (340GLT), I’m glad to hear that you're studying engineering. (and on a side note I wish you all the best with your studies, its well worth it)

The thing is that makes what you said even more shocking. I know you were just trying to make it easier for the non-engineering types to understand, but in doing so you’ve made everyone on this board a little bit dumber. Its up to people like you and I to give an engineers view of a problem and make sure people understand fully what is involved when designing such things as these caliper brackets, and not say things like well I made it from steel so she'll be right

Just for the fun of waving bits of paper around. I’m in my final year of Automotive Engineering and as well as having two Advanced Diploma’s in Mechanical Engineering (one being the standard adv dip and the other a Principle Technical Officer)

as i'm sure you know that physics are theories.

We’re not scientists

Engineering is all facts and figures, I’m sure by now you've worked that out. In nearly every subject you do there are going to be endless calculations that are performed to get resulting data that can be further analysed and so on. The only thing these calculations do not take into account is real world modelling, as there are way too many variables to take into consideration, hence why we need to do real world testing. Now days with the aid of such things a FEM (finite element modelling) in computational engineering, we can significantly reduce this real world testing to the point were it’s almost not needed (I say almost but not entirely because we can't model things like corrosion or fatigue over 20+ years that our Volvos have been terrorising the roads and so on)

If you put disc to outside you are creating more leverage and how this is going to affect strength being enough?

Even small change can make huge impact on strength, for example drilling extra holes to brake disc is something I would not do without force calculations.

jtbo, your right, small changes can make a huge impact in many different ways. In regards to moving the disk out, you are actually reducing the moment being applied to the hub. This is because you've moved the disk mounting point closer to where the wheel mounts. Remembering that the tyre contact with the road is one end of the equation and the caliper mounting lugs being the other. Where you are increasing this moment or leverage if you will is within the disk it self. So if you are able to purchase a suitable disk with the correct offset to run it at the front of the hub then the designers of that disk would have taken this into account (unless their name was adam, in which case they would have made it from steel the same thickness as the standard one a been done with it just kidding adam relax)

Just wondering, so far what are the different ventilated disks off that people have come across which have the correct dimensions? I’ve read somewhere on here that some have been trying VW stuff that fits. So really all we need to do is find a disk that doesn’t need to be modified, choose a cheap and easily available caliper (240's possibly) and design and manufacture a bracket for them. Then worry about caliper to rim clearance later

It sounds all so simple (almost as simple as finding decent front shocks, hey classicswede)

[jtbo]

I have seen BMW discs (I believe from same era 300 series bmw) and Corrado G60 discs in 360, but only from photos, so at least those should be doable.

I think BMW discs were with standard brake calipers

Science and engineering are somewhat close each other, in both one need to do lot of calculations and forget most what he feels would work, it is needed to be verified by calculations in engineering, by testing theory in science.

If I know material B is stronger than material A but I machine material B bit differently, I can't know if whatever I made from material B would be stronger than what that something from material A has been, I can presume that it can be stronger, I can estimate, but to know I would need to make some calculations. We can also make tests, find where is material A something's cracking point and test then something from Material B and see if it fails later or earlier. After such test we would also know.

I think it is called scientific approach, one method of thinking, perhaps.

[Fuse]

Makkiver's got BMW discs at front, maybe he would have some pics and more info.

[foggyjames]

I have a complete E30 brake setup on those coilover struts I picked up from Kev Strong. There's no way those discs would fit in the standard calipers.

Nic - I have an idea. Since you're clearly an engineering genius, why don't you offer to use your skills to do a stress analysis on Adam's brackets? While I appriciate that you're only trying to highlight that safety-critical items must be design with the utmost care (something which has always made be a bit nervous about caliper adaptors, and some wheel spacers), offering to help will make you a lot more popular than trying to shoot down a popular member in flames.

As an aside, aren't the knuckles / hubs made of cast iron, not steel? If they're steel...how the heck did they contort them into such a wierd shape? Steel isn't the most popular of items for casting into such shapes, is it?

cheers

James

[classicswede]

James cast iron does come under the banner of steel. There are a number of different casting methods for verying strenghts needed.

There are a lot of different mixures of metals that can be put together giving different hardness, tensile strengh etc.

I would asume Adam made his brackets from BMS wich would be fine in my experiance but a high carbon steel would probably be a bit better.

The way things are made make a big difference to the strenght. If you look at a properly rolled peice angle iron (RSA) the inside corner is very rounded. The cheap imported angele is square and does not have the same strength.

I'm not going to go into huge detail as the thread does not need it.

The point is a kit is needed that will just bolt one

[Fuse]

Yeah Makkiver didn't have stock calipers I think.

Here's a one custom brakes pic from volvo300club forum:

http://koti.mbnet.fi/mtn/images/autot/v ... ilwood.JPG

Too bad there weren't any pics from the back side. Though the guy said that those were custom made at some rally shop, so I guess those parts fit in quite nicely. Those were in a 360 with B23ET.

[foggyjames]

Oh yeah....that's what I'm talking about!

cheers

James