

I wonder if BMW could have designed a caliper cover that would have made the rear brake match better with the front calipers. There are two types of brake caliper, floating and fixed. But it's not a cost cutting measure in that if they could just put a traditional fixed caliper brake they would, but they can't without adding a lot more cost. The brake calipers are the muscle that make the braking happen. So it is a cost cutting measure in that sense that they could put some exotic bit in. They are not necessary on an M car essentially so BMW did not put one in. (The C4 caliper is a floating caliper design, and has O-ring seals.) As you can see, the common factor is that something has to float in all three disc brake. They look kinda goofy, are heavy, and it's purely for aesthetics. Even some of the new fixed calipers that now support electronic parking brakes are just a fixed caliper brake and floating caliper welded together. Technically even BMW had two calipers, you just couldn't see the drum brakes. A floating caliper for the parking brake and a fixed caliper for the main brakes (basically for show). This is why up until recently, a lot of high end cars had TWO rear calipers. You can't rely on the hydraulics because the parking brake is also an emergency redundant braking system that must work without hydraulic pressure to be safe.īMW did away with the bulky and heavy drum parking brake setup so that's no longer an option either. floating caliper - OK, I have been on a quest for a set of floating rotors for my Crossbones. On a fixed caliper, equal pressure must be applied on both sides of the brake and it's nearly impossible to put a solenoid on the outside of the brake (the wheel gets in the way). This is because one solenoid can be used to actuate a floating caliper. Floating brake calipers is called so because it moves or floats to another side when brakes are applied in order to maintain smooth braking without distorting. It's much easier to make an electronic parking brake that works with a floating caliper than one with a fixed caliper brake. Fixed calipers are fixed in place with a bracket, stabilizing them on the rotor with pistons on either. Disc brakes are straightforward: Attached to each wheel is a round metal rotor, which spins in unison with. The reason they went with it is the electronic parking brake. Disc Brake Calipers: Floating Versus Fixed Disc-o Fever.

To achieve this, the floating caliper, which is guided displaceably on a brake carrier in the direction of the disc axis and carries a brake piston and which engages over the brake disc, forms a frame which in the transitional region of the. Sliders are adequate but when you're paying upwards of 80k, you expect more. A floating-caliper disc brake is designed to prevent both tangential and radial oblique wear of the brake linings, especially under high brake stress. Definitely cost cutting measure to save beaucoup bucks. This is because float- ing calipers are less susceptible to pulsation from rotor runout and because they are smaller and.
