[Shotimes] brake caliper placement

[Carl Prochilo]

What a great question.  Several years ago when McLaren was dominating F1
racing, one of the most interesting innovations I remember seeing was the
location of the disc brake setup.  Their approach was to have the assembly
at the 6 o'clock position so that the center of gravity was as low as
possible on the car.  That car could outbrake anything out there and was a
a killer on the circuits.  Of course 2004 car is another matter.
-- 
Cheers,
Carl Prochilo
92 Ultra Red Crimson

On Fri, July 2, 2004 3:36 pm, Jon Heese said:
> Out of curiosity, I've been conducting an informal visual survey of the
> brake caliper placement on vehicles I see around.  For instance, most
> front discs have the caliper to where it grabs the top leading edge of
> the disc (10:00 on the driver's side, 2:00 on the passenger).  I've also
> seen them grabbing the top trailing edge and the extreme trailing edge.
> Among vehicles with rear discs, there seems to be an even split between
> the top leading edge and the top trailing edge, and I haven't noticed
> any trend having to do with RWD/FWD-ness in their location.
>
> Now from a physical perspective, since the rotor is an axially symmetric
> body, I don't see any inherent braking difference between any of the
> possible mounting locations; as long as it grabs somewhere, that's just
> as good as anywhere else.
>
> So, does anyone know how the engineers choose the mounting location for
> the calipers?  Is it just a space or hardware (i.e. "this spot provides
> the most structural integrity to hold the caliper to the knuckle")
> consideration?  Looks?  Aynone know?
>
> Jon Heese
> '95 GL
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