Hurray I Helped!

Helped JT do his brake upgrade on his Corvette.

This is a C7 rim with C6 Z51 brakes on a C5!

Highlights of the day...

His son coming out and seeing the rear wheels off the car the first time ever.  "Wow!  Those tires are WIDE!"

Me trying to put the rear wheel back on the hub.  To use the C7 rears on a C5 you have to use a spacer hub.  I had the wheel lined up perfectly with the studs holding the spacer, and the correct studs were hitting the back of wheel keeping me from putting the wheel on...  Here's my sign.

The test drive was a bit dramatic.  There was a scraping noise when we pulled out to set the pads.  Initially we weren't too worried since we were using the pads that were on the car from before.  C5 and C6 use the same pads, so no worries.  We theorized that the old pads just hadn't been set into the new rotors yet...

The scraping got MUCH worse as we got some heat into the brakes.

JT pulled over and I gimped alongside to see if I could see where the noise was coming from.  The pads had left a concentric pattern on the new rotor that looked like gouging, but was smooth.

I suggested we drive down to Tampa anyway, "If they're fucked, they're fucked already and that won't make it worse.  If this is because the old pads have the old rotor's wear to shed, then the drive will help."  JT liked my reasoning and off to Tampa we went.  We had dinner at Eat's American Grill (we highly recommend it!) and by the time we got there.  No scraping noise.  On the way out on cold brakes, not scraping noise.

VICTORY!

While JT was cleaning up some clutter to let him actually park cars in his garage I had a look at the old rotors.  Sure enough the pattern we were seeing on the new rotors was there.  It was from the face of the pad being worn into the old rotor.  That means it will pass as the new rotors mate with the pads.