Question for the engineers: Does the mount, position of the front calipers matter??? Options

[john rogers]

Some cars have them in front of the strut and some have them behind the strut. Does it make any difference in braking ability? Other considerations?

[lapuwali]

Back in the earliest days of disc brakes on bikes, calipers mounted to the front of the sliders was the common setup. Mounting them to the rear of the sliders, as is common today, happened in the early to mid-80s. One reason for this is the cast slider bosses are slightly stronger in compression than in tension, and the rear mounting fed the braking loads in compressing the mounts.

There's also some benefit on a bike due to distribution of the mass closer to the steering axis, rather than farther away, as a front mount will do, esp. with deep offset triple clamps (which are no longer in vogue, as they were in the early 70s). With the mass closer to the steering axis, the mass has a reduced lever arm to do things like set up a wobble that can easily turn into a tank-slapper.

In a car, the choices are, as stated, usually made more for packaging concerns than anything else. There are theoretial effects to positioning them, but these effects are pretty small, and generally can't really be felt by the driver unless all of the rubber bushings in the suspension and steering systems are replaced by solid bits.