Mopar High Performance/Racing Disc Brake Conversion: see pictures

After our Holiday track day at Buttonwillow  Raceway 12/09 Racer X found out a few things about his 1969 Dodge Charger Daytona NASCAR clone. Factory disc brakes just don't cut it on a road course and sometimes a rear sway bar makes your car loose in the rear. First you should know that prior track days for this car and driver were limited to WSIR which is known to be easy on brakes. Buttonwillow is much tighter over it's 3.2 mile layout and brake systems are put to the test a bit more here, although still not as much as somewhere like Laguna Seca.

After a couple of warm up laps I started running the car at speed. I can't tell you how exciting it is to take a '69 Dodge Daytona out on a race track like this. To protect the mildly built 440 the owner installed an Alltime Racing mopar road race pan. This gave it not only 3 more quarts of oil but it controls the oil by keeping the pickup submerged while driving as hard as you want. Which is a real challenge with almost 500 HP and nearly as much torque. After about 6 laps at speed the brake pedal went to the floor so I backed off a bit and slowed down earlier for the turns to give the brakes and brake fluid a chance to cool. Brake over heating like this is typical of OEM floater style calipers as well as many of the after market fixed calipers that are symply using old designs that have been left aside long ago by leaders of the industry. Also we noticed the car was quite loose. The Daytona has been upgraded to 1.014 torsion bars, and it still wasn't happy with the rear sway bar. We finished out our session and headed into the pits to wait our turn to go back out on track.

While in the pits we disconected the rear sway bar, rechecked the tire pressures on the Blue Streaks, and let the brakes cool. Next for the Daytona had to be better front shocks and some racing brakes. In preparation for SFSF III, a Mopar brake kit from Alltime racing has been installed. Rotor size goes from 10.5 inch to 11.75 inch stock mopar rotor. Not all calipers are created equal. Most of the aftermarket calipers you see out there today are 40 year old technology and have been long ago surpassed by inovative leaders in the industry. So you have to really do your homework and get past all the CNC wannabes.

 We will be back at the track on April 23rd to see how the 3600 lb. NASCAR clone likes it's new brakes. Stay tuned!!!