SUSPENSION AND BRAKES |
Suspension and Brakes
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Part 1: Planning
The Goal I'm not a drag racer. This is not a drag car. I am building this car not only to be fast in the straight line, but to dominate the corners as well. I'm trying to blur the lines between race car and street car, making a car that is streetable, comfortable, reliable, daily-drivable, yet take it to the track, and its absurdly fast not only in straight line performance, but in cornering and braking as well. My real passion in driving is taking a car around a race track, where acceleration, braking, and handling are all equally important parts of the equation. The MR2 is already a very well handling, well braking car, and it doesn't need a lot of help to excel in these areas, but why stop at good when great is available? Good is the enemy of great.
Brakes After the engine swap, I plan on upgrading the brakes with a big brake kit. With the stock brakes, I have experienced severe brake fade after several hard laps around a racetrack, and its a nice feature to be able to stop hard from near top speed should there be a reason to. The current brakes may be perfectly fine for a 140mph stop, but considering the top speed with the LS1 should be on the scary side of 200.. bigger brakes are a very good idea. The current plan is to have Precision Brakes make up a kit for me with about the largest discs that fit in 16" rims. Their normal kits are designed for 17" rims, but I plan on keeping my current ones. As for calipers, I'll use 4 piston calipers with some as yet undecided pads. The stock brakes on the MR2 are very heavy cast iron behemoths as well, big brakes kits, though larger, actually reduce weight. Being unsprung, that is especially important.
Suspension The suspension on the MR2 uses absurdly heavy cast iron parts. Unsprung weight is incredibly important to minimize, and though it seems Toyota designers forgot this, it doesn't mean it has to stay that way. I'm throwing around a few ideas in my head right now, everything from just having lighter copies of the current suspension made up out of stronger materials, to eliminating the McPherson strut design in favor of a completely custom double wishbone design with custom hubs. And that's another thing: the hubs. The hubs on the MR2 are again... cast iron, and again... ridiculously overweight. I definitely want to make up some lighter weight copies to reduce unsprung mass. These are things I will try to hold off on until after the swap is done, but they are definitely on the agenda. |