aluminum calipers vrs. iron calipers????, would aluminum calipers be better??? Options

[Mueller]

With everything being equal (piston size, pad size, rotor...etc....)


Would there be a performance difference between the two setups besides the obvious weight difference?


I'm thinking at normal temps, both would be equal.

I'm also guessing that once one gets more aggressive with the brakes, the aluminum calipers would be better and would be less susceptible to brake fade due to the better heat dissipation of the aluminum.

[lapuwali]

I suppose the increase heat transfer of Al v. Fe could rub both ways. Most of the heat will be in the rotor and pads, and the iron caliper wouldn't transfer it to the fluid as well. However, once the iron caliper did get hot, it would take longer for it to cool off.

Iron has 3x the stiffness of aluminum, so theoretically 1/3 of the section could be used with equal stiffness (and equal weight) with iron. However, resistance to bending loads also varies with geometry (given a rod and a tube of equal weight and materials, the tube will be stiffer, with the stiffness increasing with the diameter of the tube). It's possible to play games with that, varying section thicknesses to get more stiffness for equal weight with Al than with Fe.

The weight thing can be really significant, too. Wilwood four-pot aluminum calipers weigh next to nothing.