Brake Questions

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CanadianGT

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I'm planning on running a full Willwood 4 wheel Disc Setup on my car I've found the plumbing I need and everything but I want a power brakes setup what i wanna know is eventually UI'll be upgerading from the planned 318 powerplant to a 383 Powerplant and am wondering if this is possible. If not will I have enough power to stop the car with manual brakes?
 
Power boosters don't make the brakes any more powerful it just makes it easier (less pedal effort) on the driver. If the master cylinder in the same size, say 1" bore for both the manual & power brakes they will be the same. Being it would take less effort to stop the vehicle with the booster our mind tells us it is more powerful, but it is not. It is the size of the master cylinder, wheel cylinders and calipers that effect how powerful or not that a braking system is as far as the hydraulic part is concerned. The braking surface area is another thing all together as far as stopping power.
 
So for a street car(possibly daily driver) that I'm hopefully gonna be able to use for some light autocrossing and drag racing manual brakes would be fine?
 

Yes, if you don't mind pushing harder on the pedals than without a power booster. Most race cars have manual brakes not power brakes. I have drag raced, road raced and circle tracked and all of my cars with the exception of one circle car that was a pure stock had manual brakes. I prefer the road feel and feed back from manual brakes.
With manual brakes if you want less pedal effort you go with a smaller master cylinder but you will have more pedal travel. Or you can leave master cylinder alone and put bigger piston calipers on and achieve the same thing.

A braking system is just a hydraulic system, the smaller you make the pump in area(master cylinder) and the bigger you make the cylinder in area (wheel or caliper piston) the more power you will have. But you sacrifice movement when you do this you have to move the pump farther or more to move the same amount of fluid.

It's just like a ring & pinion, the smaller the number of pinion gear teeth you have and the higher number of ring gear teeth you have the more power you have at the driveline but with the expense of more revolutions to achieve the same speed.
 
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