Pretty basic question.... could they be used? I like the fact the disk are thin, and the normally have 4 or 6 piston calipers.

Is it possible to use them? Would they have a problem due to cooling? (in the wheel has alot less air then out in the open on a bike.) Would they have enough stopping power?

What do you guys think?

the lighter the bike the better they stop
bike weights 150Kg ish
car 500Kg ish

cant see that the brakes would like it tbh and would probably warp quite quick.

they are large discs put the contact on pads is quite small

better off with some larger car disc/pad combination imo

[Edited on 10/29/02 by rgv_stu]

This has been talked about before, I think that it is a goer. Your average supersport, high cc bike will tip the scales around the 180 kg and over mark. They are braking from speeds a bec can only dream of 160-170 and they can do it all day. The pads in a six-pot caliper are equal or maybe even larger in surface area than your cortina/sierra, the heat may be the biggest headache but ducts or harder compounds may be the answer.
I will be looking at this seriously once I'm sva'd and on the road,got to be worth looking into just for the weight saving.
Col

Have you considered the cost of using bike discs?
Depending on what donor bike you use, you would be looking at £80 to £120 per disc and for decent pads £20+ per corner.
For the cost of one bike disc you could get discs and pads all round for a sierra and still have change for a pint.

I can get two 6 piston calipers, 2 4 piston calipers, and 4 floating disks for about $560 CND = 230 GBP. So about 60GBP per wheel.... that's used very little.. I'd have trouble buying just calipers here for that.



[Edited on 10/29/02 by 95seped]

The other thing is diameter. Bike discs have a very large diameter compared to car ones, so you will have to run some seriously big wheels to get them underneath!

just FYI (since you don't believe) ways to get cheap brakes:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1870892657

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1870898547

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1870977318

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1871070959

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1871358200

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1871611096

Edit: don't know why last # is omitted in link, you need it for the links to work.

[Edited on 10/31/02 by 95seped]

Don't really know about the physics of it all, but have you guys remembered that a bike has two discs up front, one on each side? Surely that means that in order to achieve a similar sort of stopping effort, you would need to put twin discs on each front wheel (if you assume the car weighs roughly twice as much as the bike). On a bike, the rear wheel brake does very little as all the weight is transferred to the front under large stopping effort. I guess this isn't the case with a car, so maybe a single large disc on each wheel would be sufficient.

Cooling would almost certainly be a problem. It is possible to warp a disc on a bike under heavy braking, especially if this done frequently. The extra weight involved with a car would not help matters.

On the plus side, there are some very heavy bikes out there, such as Goldwings, which probably weigh nearly as much as our four wheeled friends so I guess it must be possible. If I were considering this route, I would look into stopping power on the big (heavy) bikes.

I'm in the process of fitting bike brakes to the rear of my irs bec, i reckon they will be ok on the back,as they will be virtually disabled anyway. The reason im trying it, is to save weight (plus they will look quite trick).
Iv'e seen a couple of bike engined hillclimb cars that use them on all four corners, so they must work ok.
The main problem to sort out is the handbrake issue, i'm toying with the idea of fitting a small disc and caliper setup somewhere in the drive train.

I use 2 and 4 pot bike brakes on the front of my sub 400kg race car. If in doubt, go for 6 pots on the front.
For hand brake rear callipers, use say 4 pot bike callipers as per normal, and add a single supplimentry calliper off a quad. They operate from a locking lever on the handlebars, so a small lever in the car would suffice, and take up b*gger all space.

http://www.wilwood.com/products/calipers/msc/index.asp