I’m planning on upgrading my brakes with Wilwood calipers and rotors. My first question is about caliper size. It seems most people use the Dynalite II calipers in the front, but looking at the Dynalite single it would seem to be more than adequate ( with the addition of a spacer so you could run a vented rotor) for the task. It has almost twice the piston area of a stock caliper, and it’s nice and lite. Anyone here have any experience with these two calipers on a 5g civic?
My next question concerns master cylinder size. The folks at Wilwood say that the 7/8 master is adequate for there kit that uses the DynalteII caliper, with 1 3/8 pistons. I do see that a lot of folks upgrade to a 11/16 or 1” master. Is this necessary?
And finally, is it worth all the trouble? any general thoughts, opinions and experiences with this type of upgrade would be welcome….Thanks.

 

I’m planning on upgrading my brakes with Wilwood calipers and rotors. My first question is about caliper size. It seems most people use the Dynalite II calipers in the front, but looking at the Dynalite single it would seem to be more than adequate ( with the addition of a spacer so you could run a vented rotor) for the task. It has almost twice the piston area of a stock caliper, and it’s nice and lite. Anyone here have any experience with these two calipers on a 5g civic?

-- well first off, the kit you want to buy, are talking about the full blown kit made by Wilwood or the Fastbrakes kit?


My next question concerns master cylinder size. The folks at Wilwood say that the 7/8 master is adequate for there kit that uses the DynalteII caliper, with 1 3/8 pistons. I do see that a lot of folks upgrade to a 11/16 or 1” master. Is this necessary?

-- from experience on this, going with a GSR/Type-R integra 1" mc/booster will yield the best braking power results over the 15/16 or anything under that size. It's a worthy upgrade and you will notice the differnece once you apply pressure to the brake pedal after install...


And finally, is it worth all the trouble?

--as far as the 1" mc/booster goes, yes its worth the trouble. I'm unclear as to which wilwood kit you're going with though.

any general thoughts, opinions and experiences with this type of upgrade would be welcome….Thanks.

 

The dust seals are inadequate for street use unless you plan on rebuilding them yearly or so.

Not a slam of FastBrakes or anyone who sells them, but you need to know that, esp. if you don't live in Sunny Arizona where slush and crap doesn't really get into your brakes.

 

I’m putting together my own kit, I’ve played with race cars most of my life and I seem to have most of the calipers that Wilwood makes sitting around. I also have machine tools ( I’m really dangerous! ) I know a fair bit about using these calipers in race car applications but nothing about their use on street cars. All thoughts and opinions are appreciated

 

I wouldnt recommend the dynalite single piston caliper on the front of your car. I dont think it was made with that application in mind. We have those calipers that FastBrakes gave us for our drag car, and the pads are about half the size of stock front pads and there isn't enough room to fit a venter rotor in there. Look at this pic of our FastBrakes kit.



And besides, why go through the trouble of getting brackets made, when you get the whole kit with brakets and the RIGHT calipers for the job with LARGER rotors from http://www.fastbrakes.com