Technical Question on Brake Pad Bedding

A kugel or is that kluge for you
Here's some gm metric calipers on cast aftermarket brackets to bolt in to early ford spindles.
The pads are a very thin hair below the rotor.


The caliper fits tight into the bracket, but the bracket is machined. The caliper stop surface of the bracket is minimal. All in all not to bad for what it is.


Here's factory Camaro stuff, same as 72 Chevelle.
Of course this stuff fits way better,
The pads are well below the edge of the rotor .
The caliper stop is 300% larger and fits with precision.
There's not much room to move anything.



I'd say the very last thing you'd want to do is start slopping the holes that mount the bracket to the spindle. 100% of the stopping force goes thru them bolts and holes.
If I was going to get over **** on this, I'd have the caliper mounting holes moved closer to center because Those bolt holes only keep the caliper in place. They don't have anything to do with transferring the braking force. I'd also fab up more caliper stop surface off the bracket . Something like this .


But just run it sounds like more fruitful idea.

 

Thanks so much for those photos. That is really great for comparison and it's crazy how much more surface area the stock Camaro and Chevelle caliper stops have!

The danger I see in modifying the caliper bracket is filing the spacer at an angle and not perfectly perpendicular to the thread holes, in which case contact surface area will be reduced when it tightens against the spindle. That worries me the most.

I'm not sure if slotting the bottom hole some more is an issue or not. The Speedway ones came slotted but not in the direction to pull the entire caliper and bracket in towards the hub center.

 

I'm not seeing the pad extending slightly outside the rotor to be anything to be overly concerned about. The pad will wear as it wishes. Admittedly however an area of friction material will be redundant so the brakes will be less effective than they otherwise might be, but that's arguably very marginal.

I've had the same issue on a factory car and the rotors were the thin, unvented kind, resulting in the pads eventually touching eachother making the brakes not work! Odd thing was there was plenty left on the pads and the pistons weren't over extended. The offending obstruction was quickly removed with a rasp and all was well again.

I'm not convinced about slotting holes with brakes.

Chris

 

Thank you that is some helpful information. I love hearing different opinions, it helps me learn a lot in the process.

 

I sent an inquiry to MBM Brakes (I guess the brackets are manufactured by them). They are looking into the issue. Maybe they will send a replacement set who knows. I'll post whatever comes of it. Otherwise I'll just run with the set up as some have suggested.

I haven't seen anyone who manufacturers better looking Mustang II caliper brackets for the GM intermediate calipers with 7 inch pin spacing. The forged ones for the smaller GM Metric calipers look a lot better. Wish I still had access to water jet cutting machines as I could probably make some CAD design to make them.