Write-Up: F-Body Brake Mod

it's actually been done twice on a 96. (Oldsman and me)
well worth the $1000 to stop like a race car from 120mph

Read this: https://rivperformance.editboard.com/brakes-suspension-f6/1996-to-1998-front-end-swap-w-fbody-brakes-edit-done-t5154.htm

I have a pair of F Body caliper brackets with the correct mounting bolts and bushings for someone that is interested in upgrading to an F body dual piston caliper.
They will bolt up without modification to the 97-99.
96 requires a lot more stuff as mentioned in this Write Up.
PM me if you have a need for them.

EDIT: These are SOLD

I did find those calipers, $30 for the set. ..but I still want those F-Body ones. Tomorrow Im going junkyard hopping and see if I can find some. Im not sure what to take exactly, so Im going to take the entire thing from the strut down

for the 97' you would need the caliper, bracket and pads. you would also need to but the bolt spacers to make the stock riv bolts fit the f-body brackets.
i went to the junk yard today and there was a bunch of f-body calipers there but they were all under half a foot of dirt since they take the wheels off the cars to sell them.

Are the bolt spacers found on the F-Body calipers or is this something on the Riviera? Also, are there any other cars I can check for the F-Body brake system?

the C5 corvette has the same calipers and brackets as the f-body cars, but you will likely pay more cor the "corvette" paint on them.

as for the spacers, take a look at the write-up. i believe it shows what you need to buy to make them work. they are not found on any vehicle, but something you must order from a machine shop online.

I purchased the ones I needed from McMaster-Carr.
The P/N and contact information is in this write-up somewhere, IIRC.
It's better if you take the used F-Body brackets that your getting with the calipers at the boneyard and bring them to the machine shop for drilling and tapping.
Then you wont need the bushings. The drilling spec's are also listed in this thread.
This allows you to use the original bolts that are on your Riv now. They are larger in diameter and thread pitch.
It's up to you, you can go either way.
I had bushings and F-Body bolts on mine for about 7,000 miles and when I replaced them with a drilled and tapped set they had no wear on them at all.
The only reason I changed over was that someone had mentioned a wear problem with the bushings that started to affect his braking.
He could feel and hear the calipers and mounts moving.
I did not have that problem, as it turns out.
But I don't drive the brakes hard, most of the time.

KillaKeninaRiv wrote:

I did find those calipers, $30 for the set. ..but I still want those F-Body ones. Tomorrow Im going junkyard hopping and see if I can find some. Im not sure what to take exactly, so Im going to take the entire thing from the strut down

What calipers are you talking about for $30.00.?

Try E-Bay Motors for and F-Body set if you can't get them at a local junkyard.
Any Camaro or Firebird from 98-02 will work.
Then you need the front brake lines for a bonneville from ZZP.
Again all this info is already in this thread or any other thread that discusses F-Body brakes.

IIRC AA had the bushing problem.

I did have this problem, and so did ewolfe and everyone else who's done the F-Body mod to Grand Prix or Regals. It's not bad at first, but after 10k miles or so it will happen. Member 99prixgt warned us about this on page 15 of this thread. Don't use the bushings, get your brackets drilled and tapped. The brake system is much too critical to skimp on this.

I agree with the drilling and tapping, that's why I changed mine before I had any problems.
Back when I initially did the F-Body mod and sold some rebuilt kits we were not aware of any potential problems with the bushing eventually wearing some and causing movement of the brackets on the bolts. Otherwise I would have added that step to the process, would have had to charge more but as we are finding out it is worth the extra step.
It's no big deal to do. It's just having the right size drill and metric tap to finish things up and use the OEM Riviera Bolts.
If you have a drill press at home and the necessary bits it won't even take an hour to do all 4 holes.

I have a tap if anyone wants to use it - just pay shipping. It's a cheap tool, probably not good for more than one more pair of brackets.

PM Sent
Have to do one more set that I've sold, before shipping.

Thanks! Rounding up the parts shouldnt be hard, but finding a Camaro is the thing...

Finding a 98 to 2002 Firebird or Camero is no problem what so ever at almost any junkyard in the US. They made shit loads of these cars and I only had to look for 15 minutes on Ebay Motors and had 3 sets delivered.
At the time I didn't even think to look in my local yards, and I live in the middle of nowhere and there were 2 in that yard I could have picked from. They can be your most basic 6 cylinder car and they have the same 2 piston aluminum calipers with cast iron brackets, that's all you need.
Take off the 2 bolts that hold the brackets and calipers on and your done.
Have you read this thread.? I thought it was all spelled out quite clear. Maybe not, I haven't had to read it since I did my thing.
Just DO IT.

Not around here. All the Camaros I found at the lots around here are early 90s models. I would rather have the option of pulling them myself than paying $100 for a pair on ebay, along with high shipping.

KillaKeninaRiv wrote:

Not around here. All the Camaros I found at the lots around here are early 90s models. I would rather have the option of pulling them myself than paying $100 for a pair on ebay, along with high shipping.

The ones i found on EBay were not $100.00 with high shipping. And i bought used with the intention of completely re-building before selling or using them myself.
So for me it wasn't that big a deal.

The other thing you can do is get a rebuilt pair from one of your friendly parts stores, install them with the correct front brake hose and then a couple of days later return your old ones as cores and get your core fee back.
Then you will have rebuilt units with a warranty for about $60.00 each. Is that a little easier for you.

Now lets see...as far as pricing, I guess what you could call an ''affordable'' set of calipers ends up costing a grand total of $203.60 shipped, not to mention the $109.99 +shipping for the brake lines from zzperformance. Now, in all fairness, a week ago I saw a caliper on ebay for roughly $80 apiece, so maybe thats where your savings come in at- $25.

We all arent mechanical masters here. We also dont have anything better to do with our time than rebuilding calipers either. There are people here with REAL lives and livelihoods who have better things to do than blow $400 on calipers. Maybe the answer is in here, maybe it isnt. However I can think of better things to do than read through 22 pages of 75% chit chat to find a simple answer, such as thump my nutsack!

KillaKeninaRiv wrote:

...We all aren't mechanical masters here. We also don't have anything better to do with our time than rebuilding calipers either. There are people here with REAL lives and livelihoods who have better things to do than blow $400 on calipers.

All name-calling aside, which is currently being purged, I have a purely mechanical (and polite) observation...

In Ken's quote above, his implications are that he:
-does not have unlimited time for wrenching,
-is not an expert mechanic, and
-doesn't have a lot of money to blow on F-body brakes.

Given these stated limitations, why would someone want to pursue such a relatively major modification?

I have plenty of money to blow, I just wont blow it on something that APPEARED to be a quick mod and has little for me to get out of it. For instance, the machining part. I have to save my money for buying a house and my honeymoon, so to just jack off an easy $400 for me wouldn't make sense, just to stop 20 ft faster? That would be absolutely pointless for my cars setup. My thinking was that it was something SIMPLE not so in depth. The trouble comes in, not with the mod itself, because if I wanted to I could, but in the lack of respect for others through TWO separate posts which shows scorn and contempt. But....that was yesterday, and I'm off that. He said his piece, I said mine, so everyone knows where we stand on that.

Now to make things a little easier, there could be a scale in the maintenance section that allows you to see the relative ease or complexity of the certain mod/maintenance that you are doing. This way, you don't run into the problem of a novice attempting at installing a turbo kit and looking for answers on here. Then you'd know whether or not you were out of your league before you even attempted it, and there would be no instances of name calling. Similar to buying a Transformer for a kid. If it says 10+, you probably wouldn't buy it for a 4 year old and expect him to be able to operate it. I believe they do that on zzperformance? I mean, you probably wouldn't want someone who only has experience in oil changes and brakes giving you advice on a installing a cam now would you? I ran into that problem with my Bonneville. When I asked a guy about the differentials and gear ratios for an SLE, I got 4 different answers from 4 different people. And only one was right. What were the others? ROOKIES!

Ken, here's my take on the F-body brakes. Good quality stock brakes stop my car in a heartbeat, with great control. I am not sure if there are major differences between the '97 and '98 brakes (larger diameter rotors?), but I have stayed wtih stock brakes and they work extremely well. Quality pads and rotors have netted me many thousands of miles (some driven quite hard) with no fade, warp, judder, etc, just good clean stopping power. Maybe you want to upgrade to the '98 bracket and rotor instead of the dual piston F-body if you are looking for an upgrade (if there's any difference at all).

I agree with Derek. The F-Body calipers don't really take feet of your stopping distance. What they will do is give you an extra buffer against heat and wear, and give you more confidence with repetitive high speed stops. The F-Body aluminum calipers are larger and better for shedding heat (this is beneficial at high speeds, or if you do a lot of hard stopping over and over). The pad size for F-Body is about 20% larger area, which means your pads will last longer, and again it helps to deal with the heat.

Kenneth, most of what you're saying makes sense, or at least I can understand where you're coming from. The only thing I would suggest is that you do take the time to read through a write-up thread for a mod you are considering. If there's one thing Rick is right about, it's the fact that much of the knowledge you are seeking already exists earlier in the thread (for example what I wrote above is also written on page 9).

As for the scale of difficulty idea, I like it; not sure how to execute it correctly, as we all have different levels of skills and toolbox volume. Maybe we can get a thread going that has everyone contribute their experiences and try to make some sense out of it. A bit like the "Engine Modifications" thread that never really took off: Link

Well I agree with a bit of all 3, AA, Deek & Killa... (Whoa, just had a Flip Wilson flashback!)

I love the toy analogy - "this mod only recommended for 25 years and older." But I also can see how difficult it would be to create a fairly accurate scale...

As for the brakes themselves, the stock brakes I've got are the best of any car I've ever had, with one exception...
I believe I have the OEM ceramic pads (I hope so - I bought a spare set because I like these so much!) They are noiseless, dustless, perfectly linear with the ideal initial bite, and strong enough to stop with just your big toe.
Having said that, if I drove a lot of mountain roads, I have a feeling that the rotors would be warped in no time... They are great for my normal driving, but I can feel 'em heating up fairly easily. I didn't know about the bigger brakes on '98+, and if Derek's idea isn't too hard or expensive, that would be my choice.

What size rotors are on 98+?

Jack the R wrote:

What size rotors are on 98+?

To my knowledge the same as a 97.
It was the 95 and 96's that required a bunch of changes, IIRC.
Could be wrong, It appears I have forgotten.