The Cal-look Lounge

Hi guy's, I'm getting into the braking system with the cal-looker and have been thinking about stopping power. I have type 3 wide five's in the rear but can't make my mind up on the front brakes. I have stock drums up front already but have a chance to get some discs instead. Any opinions out there on actual stopping power comparing the 2? I have heard on a cal bug running skinny tires on the front, drums are prefered due to no locking up vs dics having no drag which = quick lock up. ?????? What to do?

I put disc on mine only because stopping is the most important thing on the car. Plus I hate the pulling to one side when the drums are out of adjustment

I've got to really slam hard on my brakes to get them to lock up (4 wheel discs w/ 145's). My brakes are the favorite feature of my car, by far!

I lock up my front brakes with the original drums. But drum brakes fade REALLY fast compared to disc brakes.

exactly why I want to convert to disc. I've overcooked my drum brakes too many times, very scary to step down and nothin' there.  last time I was coming up on Sarge's red car FAST and saw his brake lights pop on.....  came too close.

Drum brakes are questionable for a STOCK VW, if you have discs, use them.

if you are concerned about locking front tires due to small contact patch, then raise front ride height and run 155 or 165 radial.
Function before form.

I've laid into my discs quite hard from about 100 mph on my 155's, and have not had them lock up. They brake about twice as well as my old 356 brakes. I wouldn't trade them for anything else. The car literally sits down from 100 to about 40 with one shove of the pedal, and quite under control.

It's fun having horsepower but even better with stopping power.  Do the discs up front... you'll love it!

I obviously run the 4 wheel discs with 145's up front.  It's all about the brake propotioning.  Having the correct amount of braking bias in front vs. rear.  I have yet to lock up my front brakes, but haven't absolutely stabbe dthem either........I haven't needed to add more at the pedal to get stopped.  In the event I do, I'll probably end up eating the windshield.   ;) 

I like the pedal feel a lot better with front discs...only when the rears start to get way out of adjustment do you really notice a change.

I'm a huge fan of disc brakes. I had a couple scares with front discs and 135's on my bug, but once I put 145's on it I had no trouble at all. The difference from the drums  is phenominal. In fact, my Dad doesn't want to spring for discs for my 16 year old brothers '69 bug so I'm most likely end up paying for them myself.

sounds good guys. Thanks for the help!

If you're locking the front wheels, you can try to use a bigger cylinder on the rear wheels to help compensate for the small tires & rake.

Exactly - use front cylinders in the rear drums, an old beach buggy trick. On my race car I used front cylinders in the rear and rear cylinders in the fronts, never had a problem with stopping from 100+mph and always felt stable under braking.

However, I've got discs to go the front of both my bugs - stock 4 bolt for the '68 and CB 5-bolt for the '51.

I run 4 wheel discs, but have to be honest, my old car (low mileage 64 bug) had stock drums all round and that thing stopped on a dime PERFECTLY every time.

i run 145s on mine with disks and have locked up a few thimes. once at about 100 mph which was scary!!!(i was not acctually driving, i let my friend have a go!!) but would not go back to druums. i would rather back off(progressive braking) than have bad brake fade and not be able to stop at all.......

I ran drums on mine for years.  New drums, high quality shoes, obsessive about keeping them adjusted.  Never had a problem, would pull the car down from 100+ .... once.   ::)  Once you overheated them, you were screwed. 

Once I put the turbo on the car, I went throught the traps at 127 and very nearly ran off the end of the track.  I now have discs and realize how crazy I was to depend on the stock drums for all those years. 

Locking up the front only happens if you panic and stab them.  Learn to threshold brake and you wont have any issues.  You can never have too much braking power, because you can always back off on how hard you use them!  :)

That's also where propotioning valves are nice, you can dial in your brake bias, and fine tune the system. 

hmmm your making me think now, i was gonna keep stock drum's with my new stroker.............but now not to sure  :-\

Any recommendations on front disks? I have a possible source for a CSP set up for around $600 at the moment. The only downside is that they are really heavy. Airkewld has a very nice setup as well with wilwood calipers for just a bit more and they weigh less than half compared to the CSP kit. Anyone use the empi/CB/SocalImports/ACindustries Kits? Thanks for all the responses guys!

Good thing they are disc brakes then.  Discs are more effective at slowing down those big flywheels behind your wheels.

The CB kit comes with an Al hat and a steel rotor bolted onto it.  When this rotor wears out, you bolt on a new, low cost rotor onto the cast Al hat.  The AC Industries has an all iron disc that is incredibly heavy by comparison.  Anyone toss one of those rotors onto a scale?

That's good advice, and not just in an old VW. Most non ABS cars, disc or drum, will lock brakes up if you stab them. You see these people on the Los Angeles freeways all the time....  going along @ 75mph, then all of the sudden brake lights come one, car noses way down into the ground, and a huge blue cloud of acrid smelling tire smoke. If people knew how to threshold brake and modulate the brakes....
And it isn't that hard to learn and practice. In fact it's kind of fun.

I think you should practice in front of these people, Jim.

I'm shy John

sounds good guys. I think i'm going to get the airkewled set up since they weigh about the same as a stock drum setup. As far as modulating the brakes, I have had some fun learning to drive my WRX in some rally cross events where braking is steering and downshifting is braking  ;D Quite a fun experience! As for now, checking things off of my things to do list on the cal-looker to try and get it done by this summer.

Always had stock drum brakes on the 66' 1300. But since the 1679cc is going in, opted for a nice US made set of AMS wide 5 disk brake kit from 70's.
I wonder if anyone else has used them?

(http://i105.photobucket.com/albums/m208/benito26/2008_1107martins0037Small.jpg)

Nice find. The calipers and pads looks very ... small!  :o

I run 145/15 and stock disc brakes with a mild 1835 and that's not enough.
I think I will go for and old European trick by using Talbot Horizon calipers (I think there is some Opel/Vauxhall that use the same calipers too) and type3 rear drums.
Those calipers are a direct bolt on to the stock spindles, have 50mm pistons and bigger pads.

never heard of Opel running these brakes, but it is possible. and the talbots work very good on my type3, but be aware off the wheels you run as my empi's dont have much clearance. in fact i had to trim some off the end off the callipers to clear the spokes.

It seems that some Kadett or early astra had the girlings calipers that suits on beetle.
I will find the calipers and try if it works with fuchs wheels.

bring a wheel and see if it fits on my car. always welcome to do that. i think Porsche wheels are flatter and would fit better.

Small kick :). What do you guys recommend for a front disc brake kit. Need one for my 64 beetle. I don't want them to widen the track as the wheels sit perfectly now. How is the Airkewld kit? Master cilinder of good quality?

I have 4 discs brakes too and it's pretty nice. Front are genuine VW parts and rear from a Golf 3, master cylinder have a bigger diameter, it's the one they call "Cup". To be more powerful you can put Simca 1000/1100 calipers on the front, they are plug and play on the vw spindle, and the interest is that you can put soft or ferodo pads on it.


As Yvre says, on a beetle it's better to have more power on the rear brakes than on front-engined cars to equilibrate the braking.

About kits, I heard CSP are good products, but I never had the opportunity to try a car with it.