One of the best "bang for the buck" brake upgrades for a 4th gen f-body is to swap the front calipers with some from a C5 Corvette.  While the fronts have been done many times in the past few years and have proven themselves to be a worthwhile change, what about the rear calipers?

It has been determined by the experts at FRRAX that there is little to no performance advantage to adding rear C5 calipers to an f-body.  The only possible advantage is that like the C5 front calipers, the rears may be pressure cast which could result in less caliper deflection under load.  However, the only genuine benefit to adding C5 calipers on the rear is for appearance reasons and for the street credibility of being able to say that you have Corvette calipers all around, and not just on the front.

Until now, it was not known how well the C5 rear calipers fit or worked on an f-body because there was no public knowledge of it being done before.  It turns out, very little needs to be done to add C5 calipers to the rear to match the fronts.  What needs to be done to get Corvette stopping power on all four corners is as follows:

Front Calipers
- Adapter brackets and information available from SpeedSpecialty
- Installation pictorial found at CamaroSSworld

Rear Calipers
- No adapter brackets needed as calipers are exact in size and mounting location
- Uses stock f-body hardware except anti-rattle spring


Please read before continuing!
Minor modification to the rear anti-rattle spring is possibly necessary.  The C5 anti-rattle spring is drastically different than the f-body spring and in my particular case with an aftermarket rotor, it needed to be modified because the edges of the spring rubbed on the edge of the rotor.  This could be due to the possibility of the aftermarket rotor being slightly larger in diameter.  It is unknown if the same problem exists with stock rotors so before you install rear C5 calipers on your f-body, carefully check to see if you actually need to make the following modifications to the spring before going through with it.

	Introduction Looking down into the calip4er along the brake rotor edge, the problem is a bit hard to see in this image but the circled horizontal line is the edge of the anti-rattle spring. You need to use a little bit of imagination to see where it rubs on the edge of the rotor as it continues down through the caliper.
	Step 1 This is an example of the edge of the C5 rear anti-rattle spring and where the rotor was coming in contact. This was happening to one degree or another on both "edges" of each of both springs.
	Step 2 Carefully clearance of the spring for the rotor. Make sure you don't take out more than needed, and make sure that it does not get very hot and lose its temper.
	Step 3 This is what the clearanced spring should look like.  It may take more than one session of Step 2 above to ensure that enough is removed to adequately clear the rotor.  It is important that you don't remove more than what is necessary to ensure the spring retains proper tension.

Step 4
Reassemble the rear brakes and test them slowly and carefully before driving on the street, checking for any scraping sounds.  Once again, it may be necessary to repeat Step 2 until enough clearance is achieved.  Once you are sure that everything fits well and it assembled properly, you will have C5 brakes on all four corners.


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