**Brake Caliper Placement: A Study of Vehicle Design and Functionality**

When it comes to designing a vehicle, there are numerous factors that go into creating a well-rounded and functional automobile. One aspect of vehicle design that often flies under the radar is brake caliper placement. The location of these critical components can have a significant impact on both the performance and functionality of a vehicle. In this article, we will delve into the world of brake caliper placement, exploring the various factors that influence its location and examining the data from a recent study of 55 different vehicles across 21 manufacturers.

**Factors Influencing Brake Caliper Placement**

One of the key factors that can affect brake caliper placement is the type of vehicle being designed. For example, an off-roading 4x4 vehicle may require specialized suspension packaging to accommodate deep mud or water, leading to a higher placement of the calipers to keep them out of debris. In such cases, the cost and practicality of the design come into play, with designers opting for locations that minimize dirt accumulation and maintenance issues. Additionally, aesthetic considerations can also influence brake caliper placement, with designers choosing locations that create a visually appealing appearance.

**Data from the Detroit Auto Show**

To gain insight into brake caliper placement in real-world vehicles, we turned to data collected from the 2015 Detroit Auto Show. This study examined 55 different vehicles across 21 manufacturers, documenting their brake caliper placement on both the front and rear wheels. The results were fascinating, revealing a surprisingly consistent pattern of brake caliper placement.

**The Average Placement Pattern**

According to the data, the majority of brake calipers (53%) are placed towards the rear wheel of each vehicle, with 47% located towards the inner quadrant of the rear wheel. In terms of placement on the front wheels, the results showed a slight bias towards the outside, with 49% of brake calipers located towards the rear wheel and 51% towards the front. This distribution suggests that designers often prioritize weight distribution over aesthetics, placing brake calipers in locations that minimize weight shift and improve handling.

**Performance-Oriented Vehicles**

Interestingly, performance-oriented vehicles like sports cars exhibited a different placement pattern. In these cases, brake calipers were found to be 35% towards the rear wheel, with 65% located towards the front wheel. Furthermore, on the front wheels, there was an even stronger bias towards the inside, with 83% of brake calipers placed in this location and 17% up front.

**Exceptions and Observations**

The Dodge Charger provided a notable exception to these general trends. While the base model had brake calipers located towards the front wheel, the Hellcat model shifted its placement to the rear wheel more centrally located. This change was likely driven by the need for improved cooling and heat dissipation in high-performance applications.

**GT3 Cars and Weight Distribution**

Another interesting observation came from examining the brake caliper placement on GT3 cars, such as the Lexus RCF GT3 and the Corvette C7 GT3. Both of these vehicles featured brake calipers located towards the inside of the vehicle, with a focus on minimizing weight distribution and maximizing performance.

**Conclusion**

The study of brake caliper placement offers valuable insights into the design decisions made by manufacturers when creating their vehicles. By examining the factors that influence brake caliper placement, we can gain a deeper understanding of both the functional and aesthetic considerations involved in vehicle design. Whether it's off-roading 4x4s or performance-oriented sports cars, brake caliper placement is a critical aspect of vehicle design that can have a significant impact on both performance and functionality.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhello everyone and welcome in this video we're going to be discussing brake caliper location why manufacturers put brake calipers in the places that they do so we're going to be looking at uh some different cars out there and also some data that I took while I was visiting the Detroit Auto Show uh checking out various vehicles and see if we can come to a conclusion if there is an ideal spot depending on the purpose of the car so first let's just look at some of the different reasons why you may place the brake calipers in a different location and what I've drawn here is kind of a an outline of a vehicle with the rear tire and the front tire and then basically you've got you know an upper location a lower location back and front uh kind of towards the inside of the vehicle of where you may place the brake caliper I've divided up into these four sections so uh from a weight distribution perspective you may want to put the brake calipers toward the center to keep the moment of inertia of the vehicle lower uh in orders for it to be a little bit more agile you also may want to place it down low to keep the center of gravity of the vehicle down low uh so weight distribution could play a role in that aerodynamics can also play a role you've got air passing over these wheels and if there's a certain path that the air likes to take where it could be cooling the brakes then you don't want to put that brake caliper in that location you want the air to be able to flow and cool down those brakes also if you have uh ducts for the air to feed the front brakes or the rear brakes you may want to have that duct positioned so that it blows air onto the brake itself not onto the caliper so that could play a role in where you place the caliper depending on how you have that air duct routed and you may want to have a shorter routing so that you blow it up towards the front rather than a longer routing which is more complicated cost a bit more you know adds more complexity to it uh to Route the air towards the back another Factor could be suspension packaging so you've got control arms knuckles brake line routing uh for example if you had an upper control arm that was placed right here and you would have an interference if you had your brake caliper placed there well then obviously you can't place the brake caliper there and you'll have to place it in another location uh the vehicle purpose can play a role so for example if you have this off-roading 4x4 vehicle uh that you know is going to be going through deep mud or water things like that well then you may place the calipers a bit higher to try and keep them out of the mud or the debris or whatever it may be down there so they don't get quite as dirty or get messed up uh cost will always play a role in everything so if there is a location that is for some reason cheaper to do whether that be packaging or if there's less interferences or things like that uh then you know that's definitely going to be preferred uh from the marketing side where you want to keep the cost of the vehicle as low as possible and then also appearance always plays a role so if there's a location that the designer thinks looks best then that may play a role in where the caliper ends up so now let's look at some actual vehicles and look at some hard data so while I was at the Detroit Auto Show I was checking out different cars and seeing where they placed these uh brake calipers and I looked at 55 different cars across 21 different manufacturers and took some data on where they place these calipers so what we've got going on here is the different locations this will be the rear tire on the right side and this will be the front tire on the right side and then you've got this upper quadrant uh inner quadrant lower quadrant and towards the barer of the vehicle so on a percentage basis is what I'm looking at where they placed the brake calipers so of these 55 cars uh and if it wasn't apparent this green car here represents all cars it's a van and it's green uh so where they place the majority of them we've got 53% were towards the rear on the rear wheel 47% on the inner of the rear wheel zero up top zero on the bottom so I think the suspension packaging is playing the role here uh where you've got your control arms interfering and you're not going to be placing the brake calipers up high or down low so 53% towards the rear 47 uh towards the front for the rear tire for the front tire 49% towards the rear and 51% towards the front so you know this is kind of a 50/50 uh we know they're not up top we know they're not on the bottom uh but they're distributed between the front and the rear fairly evenly as far as being on the inside or the outside a slight preference towards the outside so you know I wasn't quite satisfied there so I took a look at some different sports cars so of these 55 cars about half of them were sports cars you know things like Porsche uh Corvettes vipers things like that where they're obviously being geared towards you know a track Friendly Car uh that's performance oriented and so of those cars I took the same data and you know as we can tell there's going to be zero up top and down low from the previous data but what's interesting is there was definitely a bias for these performance oriented cars so for the rear 35% of the brake calipers were placed towards the rear 65% so you know definitely a bias towards the front towards the inside of the car uh for the rear brakes and then for the front brakes an even heavier bias to be towards the inside so 83% uh were towards the inside and 17 were up front so what this is telling me is what they're probably going for with these performance oriented cars is to have the weight centrally located and then I would imagine up front that they've got uh air cooling ducts for the front brake uh that they've probably got routing towards this and that's why you know they want to keep it the weight towards the back and then also have plenty of cooling for the brakes uh an interesting thing the Dodge Charger when I looked at the base model uh it had the brake calipers up front however when you look at the Hellcat then it places the front calipers in the rear more centrally located so it was interesting to see that change to go from you know an everyday kind of v8 car to a performance oriented v8 car you know same car but more performance oriented model uh and then also looking at some of the GT3 cars for example the Lexus RCF GT3 and the Corvette C7 GT3 uh both of these having the brake calipers towards the inside of the vehicle and then kind of down low as well so they kind of put the weight towards the center and then tried to lower it a bit you know kind of keep the weight low and in the center uh which is ideal from a weight distribution point of view so if you have any questions or comments feel free to leave them below thanks for watchinghello everyone and welcome in this video we're going to be discussing brake caliper location why manufacturers put brake calipers in the places that they do so we're going to be looking at uh some different cars out there and also some data that I took while I was visiting the Detroit Auto Show uh checking out various vehicles and see if we can come to a conclusion if there is an ideal spot depending on the purpose of the car so first let's just look at some of the different reasons why you may place the brake calipers in a different location and what I've drawn here is kind of a an outline of a vehicle with the rear tire and the front tire and then basically you've got you know an upper location a lower location back and front uh kind of towards the inside of the vehicle of where you may place the brake caliper I've divided up into these four sections so uh from a weight distribution perspective you may want to put the brake calipers toward the center to keep the moment of inertia of the vehicle lower uh in orders for it to be a little bit more agile you also may want to place it down low to keep the center of gravity of the vehicle down low uh so weight distribution could play a role in that aerodynamics can also play a role you've got air passing over these wheels and if there's a certain path that the air likes to take where it could be cooling the brakes then you don't want to put that brake caliper in that location you want the air to be able to flow and cool down those brakes also if you have uh ducts for the air to feed the front brakes or the rear brakes you may want to have that duct positioned so that it blows air onto the brake itself not onto the caliper so that could play a role in where you place the caliper depending on how you have that air duct routed and you may want to have a shorter routing so that you blow it up towards the front rather than a longer routing which is more complicated cost a bit more you know adds more complexity to it uh to Route the air towards the back another Factor could be suspension packaging so you've got control arms knuckles brake line routing uh for example if you had an upper control arm that was placed right here and you would have an interference if you had your brake caliper placed there well then obviously you can't place the brake caliper there and you'll have to place it in another location uh the vehicle purpose can play a role so for example if you have this off-roading 4x4 vehicle uh that you know is going to be going through deep mud or water things like that well then you may place the calipers a bit higher to try and keep them out of the mud or the debris or whatever it may be down there so they don't get quite as dirty or get messed up uh cost will always play a role in everything so if there is a location that is for some reason cheaper to do whether that be packaging or if there's less interferences or things like that uh then you know that's definitely going to be preferred uh from the marketing side where you want to keep the cost of the vehicle as low as possible and then also appearance always plays a role so if there's a location that the designer thinks looks best then that may play a role in where the caliper ends up so now let's look at some actual vehicles and look at some hard data so while I was at the Detroit Auto Show I was checking out different cars and seeing where they placed these uh brake calipers and I looked at 55 different cars across 21 different manufacturers and took some data on where they place these calipers so what we've got going on here is the different locations this will be the rear tire on the right side and this will be the front tire on the right side and then you've got this upper quadrant uh inner quadrant lower quadrant and towards the barer of the vehicle so on a percentage basis is what I'm looking at where they placed the brake calipers so of these 55 cars uh and if it wasn't apparent this green car here represents all cars it's a van and it's green uh so where they place the majority of them we've got 53% were towards the rear on the rear wheel 47% on the inner of the rear wheel zero up top zero on the bottom so I think the suspension packaging is playing the role here uh where you've got your control arms interfering and you're not going to be placing the brake calipers up high or down low so 53% towards the rear 47 uh towards the front for the rear tire for the front tire 49% towards the rear and 51% towards the front so you know this is kind of a 50/50 uh we know they're not up top we know they're not on the bottom uh but they're distributed between the front and the rear fairly evenly as far as being on the inside or the outside a slight preference towards the outside so you know I wasn't quite satisfied there so I took a look at some different sports cars so of these 55 cars about half of them were sports cars you know things like Porsche uh Corvettes vipers things like that where they're obviously being geared towards you know a track Friendly Car uh that's performance oriented and so of those cars I took the same data and you know as we can tell there's going to be zero up top and down low from the previous data but what's interesting is there was definitely a bias for these performance oriented cars so for the rear 35% of the brake calipers were placed towards the rear 65% so you know definitely a bias towards the front towards the inside of the car uh for the rear brakes and then for the front brakes an even heavier bias to be towards the inside so 83% uh were towards the inside and 17 were up front so what this is telling me is what they're probably going for with these performance oriented cars is to have the weight centrally located and then I would imagine up front that they've got uh air cooling ducts for the front brake uh that they've probably got routing towards this and that's why you know they want to keep it the weight towards the back and then also have plenty of cooling for the brakes uh an interesting thing the Dodge Charger when I looked at the base model uh it had the brake calipers up front however when you look at the Hellcat then it places the front calipers in the rear more centrally located so it was interesting to see that change to go from you know an everyday kind of v8 car to a performance oriented v8 car you know same car but more performance oriented model uh and then also looking at some of the GT3 cars for example the Lexus RCF GT3 and the Corvette C7 GT3 uh both of these having the brake calipers towards the inside of the vehicle and then kind of down low as well so they kind of put the weight towards the center and then tried to lower it a bit you know kind of keep the weight low and in the center uh which is ideal from a weight distribution point of view so if you have any questions or comments feel free to leave them below thanks for watching\n"