Yesterday we brought you spy shots of the Toyota FT-86 all speced out for racing duty by Gazoo.
Today our spy photogs have managed to hop behind the wall and get shots not only of the FT-86 testing, but also of the team working on it in the pits.
The last batch of photos also brought a good comment, Velocity_X saw the photos and asked, "Am i the only one who has noticed that this car has front/forward mounted brake calipers?" No, sir, you were not!
We don't have any specific answers to this question, so we have to once again wade into the arena of the educated guess (with the help of one of our brighter engineers). The best answer we could come up with was this: packaging. Because the FR-S/FT-86/BRZ has the engine mmounted so low and nearly directly over the axle line (a setup that also prevents the car from being AWD), mounting a steering rack forward of this would be a problem. According to him it's also problematic for a carmaker to try to put the steering pieces through the engine block. Rear mounted steering may not be as good, but it fits and that makes it better than nothing. (Those of you who saw the Subaru BRZ Prologue concept from Frankfurt will notice that that car did have rear-mounted brakes, unfortunately, that car didn't have any steering parts so that brake location was likely just visual.)
jasonmzw20 says:
07:29 PM, 10/18/11
Am I seeing correctly? 4-piston, FIXED brake calipers up front? Wonder if they'll at least offer them on the production model as a big brake kit. Those alone would drive the cost of the car up another $2k. Hopefully, the production model will have at least dual-piston, floating calipers.
Yeah, it would be nice if the calipers were mounted rearward up front, and frontward at the rear to put weight toward the middle of the chassis, but seems that compromises were in order, as you guys touched on. My 91 MR2's calipers are mounted in such a fashion. =P
velocity_x says:
08:11 AM, 11/ 3/11
@ IL
Thanks for answering my query about the brake caliper placement !