Rear Brake Upgrade: two piston caliper

Schulmann

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I saw on Roe's web page that there is a Rear Brake Upgrade kit available.
The kit comes with two piston calipers.

I was wondering if the kit really reduces the braking distance by 30 feet.

Is there somebody using this kit ?
What is the brake performance improvement ?
 

ViperRay

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I'm not familiar with Roe's product but you have to be careful that you don't end up with too much rear brake bias. If you are doubling the piston area (Roe says pad area but I presume he means piston area since increasing brake pad area does not increase clamping force) you are doubling the clamping force. Even if you leave the stock prop valve in place, this will probably still yield too much rear bias and early rear lockup. You might then have to place an adjustable prop valve to compensate.

I went with Tom Hayden's rear caliper upgrade which increases piston diameter from 36 to 40 mm. In combination with removing the prop valve o-ring, this appears to yield approximately the right balance although I have not had the car on the track yet with this upgrade. It's a simple bolt on as it's the stock caliper with enlarged pistons and priced fairly.

It seems to be an accepted fact that the stock brake system on the Viper has too little rear bias (I assume you don't have ABS) and any increase in rear brake bias can only help provided you maintain a proper balance.
 

Tom F&L GoR

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One other issue to wrestle with is whether you can uninstall it. I believe mounting the two-piston caliper requires you to cut off the mounting brackets for the OEM caliper, and then you also have to add on a separate parking brake (as may be required in some state inspections) since the OEM part does both functions.

A plug for either product - until you've tried it, you don't realize how the inadequate rear brakes may limit stopping performance. The OEM setup is nowhere close to ideal. (It feels so good when you stop banging your head on the wall...)
 
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Schulmann

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I am wondering if the braking performance is improved with this setup. Will it really reduce the breaking distance ?
 
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