OEM rear caliper availability = none!

[Tom]

Howdy. I don't visit here much but did stop by and saw the posts regarding Viper brakes on older Mopars. First let me say that my first car was a '70 Duster with 340/4spd/8.75 posi with 4.30 gears... it rusted away (didn't they all?) so it became a donor car for a Cobra replica (yes, with a 340/4spd/solid axle 8.75 rear.) And that became the down payment for the '94 Viper I own now.

BUT... a different subject: anybody order a left rear brake caliper from Dodge lately? You won't get one, there -6 in the country. Yes, negative six. And if you could get one, they are about $450 each.

I re-size the rear calipers from the 36mm to 40mm size and think that bang for the buck ($630 to be exact), this makes a really good performance improvement. No, not real race car stuff, but braking like what we probably all wish the car had to start off with. The real hang-up in doing this, though, is the availability of rear calipers. Therefore, I do the 40mm deal on an exchange basis only, even if the customer wanted to pay for to keep the old ones. It just takes me too long to find more, and when I do, they are getting more expensive.

A Dakota truck tuner in California is buying up a lot of them, and as we've seen here, other Mopars may be doing more of this, too. Hey, I don't want to be selfish, either, but it's that interesting situation of the rear calipers not really being "great" brakes, but unfortunately, they are often the "only" brakes that go on the car. Yes, I know there are aftermarket brakes, but (correct me if this isn't right) they require irreversible cutting of the arms and start off as a $4000 investment (if you did all four at the same time.) For the guy that has a torn dust boot and leaking seal and now has to buy a $450 OEM replacement, you are SOL. The service manual says they aren't rebuildable, and now that you can't get them at the auto parts store OR the dealer, what are you going to do?

Not crying chicken little, but if you are in that boat, send me an email and I will send you the rebuild instructions and steer you to all the replaceable parts.

In the meantime, if you want the 40mm calipers from me, I can't promise I'll have a whole bunch "on the shelf" waiting for you. I have poached on eBay, found others, and so now own enough sets that I can get a quantity break on machine shop costs. But when my 6 six sets are sold, I have to wait for all the cores to come back before I can make more. It's kind of like being in business for only one week out of four.

I won't flatter myself, but I wonder if you have calipers for sale that if you would post, you could sell them to other Viper owners. I have enough inquiries from potential customers about keeping their old calipers that I would think there are "40mm customers" that would buy them for the conversion.

That's the big long sad story. Personally, I would like to see the rear calipers stay in the Viper community. I know old Mopar drum brakes suck, but hopefully there's an alternate for them, since there isn't really another for the Viper. I just picked up another handful of calipers from Frank Barba, so I'm all set myself. Interesting situation overall.