Problems with Flynbye C5/C4 Brake Setup

I decieded to post up a few problems I had while installing Flynbye's C5/C4 brake setup on STOCK S10 SPINDLES.

I have read a few different threads that have done this swap using BELLTECH 2100 SPINDLES & the way they are written makes it appear that this is a simple bolt on deal.

First I have a ZQ8 truck & really dont care about lowering it anymore than it is because I like the way it rides now & dont want to change that.

I have UB upper control arms & tall upper ball joints.  I bought FNB brackets to use the C5 Z06 calpiers & C4 13 inch rotors so they would fit under my 17 inch Corvette sawblade wheels. I bought the calipes & abutment brackets new from the Chevy dealer & the slotted & drilled rotors from Ebay.

I had a stock set of S10 rotors turned down for hubs.

So I set out to do the swap....

After grinding the piss out of my spindles to get the FNB brackets to bolt up & even come close to centering the rotor in the abutment bracket I get it all bolted up only to find that during a hard full lock turn the back of the caliper is hitting the frame & compressing the caliper so the next time you use the brakes the pedal goes to the floor till you quickly pump it back up before you hit anything.

So after a few times of this & I also find out that the hose banjo bolt is also contacting the frame I decieded to bolt a 1/4 thick piece of aluminum to the stop on the spindle so when it swings to hit the stop on the lower control arm it wouldnt let the caliper hit the frame.

Everything was good till one night pulling into a tight parking spot I heard a snap....When I went to leave & used the brakes I heard a rubbing noise that was not good.  Once I got home using the emergency brake to stop I pulled the left front wheeel to find that the spindle had broke at the lower mount because when turning it put too much pressure on it due to me installing the aluminum piece to keep the caipler from hitting.

I was gonna ditch the whole Vette brakes deal & go back to stock but after investing the time & $ to get this far I tried to figure out what I needed to do to make it work PROPERLY.

I took the calipers off & ground down the ledge above the brake hose bolt that was contacting the frame & then retapped the hose bolt hole to 10 X 1.5 & got a SS button head bolt & new copper crush washer & installed the bolt to block off this hole.

Then went to the bottom side of the caliper oppisite of the brake bleeder valve & drilled & tapped a hole to 10 X 1.5 & went to autzone & got new banjo bolts a crush washers. The stock Vette caliper bolt size is 10 X 1.0 which is harder to find.

I then bolted it all up & modified another set of spindles & ground on them & the abutment brackets to get everything to line up I now have no more problems with the caliper contacting the frame during full lock turns.

This may or may not be a problem with Belltech spindles but is def a problem with stock spindles so I just wanted to let others know that this is not a bolt on deal like some of the threads I read prior to starting this project.

Have you contacted to company to address this issue?

Thanks Worx, always good to hear the possible issues that can come into play when piecing things together. Sorry it's been so much trouble for you. I've just got my fingers crossed that I don't have a similar issue.

Who turned down the rotors into hubs for you? My lathe isn't even close to big enough.

Flynbye returning phone calls ??  HAHAHAHHAHAHHAA  Yeah right.

I took them to the local machine shop to get them turned.  $60

Sounds like you should have do the B body spindle mod & either kept the 12" B body brakes or modified them for the C5 brakes.. like I did. I also use the turned down S10 rotors. I had no problems & the adapter brackets were from KORE3. I was not impressed w/ what I saw in quality vs. price w/ flynbye compared to KORE3.. & when I hear stuff like this, & them not returning calls or emails, it just assures me flynbye is a poor company to deal with.

Who turned down the rotors into hubs for you? My lathe isn't even close to big enough.

an option for that is to bandsaw/torch off the bulk of the rotor, and then do a horrible interrupted cut on the lathe with the remainder to finish it up. depending on how you torch it, you might have a hell of a time too.

maybe a little grinder action before the lathe too.

Man, that's a bunch of BS.  He was one of the guys I used to recommend on the interwebz.

Thank you for sharing, maybe post this on thirdgen.org (TGO) Ed Miller is ( Flynbye) God there. Maybe he will help you out, worked before with a TGO post....just ask bigtruckdriver or whatever his screen name is, Told him to call out Mikz86TA on TGO or whatever his fag name is.

When I did the swap the first time the Chevy dealer gave me the wrong abutment brackets (Z51) & once I got everything installed & went to but the wheel on it was rubbing the caliper....

I called Ed on a Sunday & he actually answered the phone & helped me indentify the problem (wrong brackets) so the next day I went back to the chevy dealer & swapped the brackets for the right ones.

I was very gratefull that he took the time to help me then & not knocking his work as the bracket he made worked great but it came with no instructions & pretty much had to figure everything out by myself.  I read a couple different threads by other people that had done the same exact swap but used Belltech spindles & did not have to grind on the spindles like I had to on the stock S10 spindles.

I called & left a message about my calipers hitting the frame during full lock turns & as of now have never got a return phone call. I pretty much figured it out myself as I cant stand not driving my truck.

Here is a pic from the back of the caliper... The shiny aluminum area before grinding had a ledge about 3/8 tall the whole length. It was probalby there to protect the hose mounting bolt which I am pointing too.

 

I ground off the ledge & tapped & installed a SS button head bolt & redrilled a new hole on the bottom.

Can you do me a huge favor and post a picture of the other side too. I ordered one left and on right brake rotor from summit and now that I have the boxes open, they're identical. I can't imagine why they would have separate part numbers for identical rotors, so I think I got a pair of lefts.

Look to see which way the venting is in the rotor.

i know GM has been using the same one sided vented rotors on the vettes to save money. weird, but i guess most buyers will never notice.
I know the c6z51 oem rotors i had were the same way.

Pic of right side...

i know GM has been using the same one sided vented rotors on the vettes to save money. weird, but i guess most buyers will never notice.
I know the c6z51 oem rotors i had were the same way.

I've been wondering what the true effectiveness difference would be. I've seen differences between straight and curved vain and that was pretty damn small. If they're willing to send me a pre-paid label for the return I'll get them swapped out, but I'm certainly not paying return shipping on a 13" brake rotor.

My C5 rotors have different part #s for left and right but I haven't taken them out of the box yet to look for differences. 

FWIW I tried calling flynbye 4 or 5 times to order brackets and lines from him and he never answered the phone or returned my calls.  I specifically said in the messages that I was ready to buy but couldn't order off the website because I needed them shipped to Canada.

I emailed Tobin at Kore3 to see if they made brackets for the blazer spindles and he sent me a reply within a few hours with all the info I needed.  That sealed the deal for me.

If you ever need something shipped to Canada LMK

I ordered from the website & waited 6 weeks to get the brackets.

I would have ordered them from Kore3 but he didnt make the brackets I needed.

Thanks!  I think Kore3 make a lot of stuff that isn't listed on their site.  The only reason I knew they made the blazer spindle adapters was that I happened to see him comment on them in a thread on pro-touring.com.

Yeah I talked to Tobin & he doent make a bracket for my setup,but I did order a new set of front brake lines from him.

Nice guy & great to do business with !!

How long was your wait for your stuff from FNB?

I ordered the parts for my front conversion on Feb 20th and haven't heard word one from him. Tried calling, but didn't leave any voicemails, just sent out an e-mail, I'm just over 7 weeks now.