like you know anything :rolleyes:
/sarchasim
2 very good points… most importantly… dont buy race pads… buy high performance street pads.
i have also been looking to upgrading my brakes as well…but i figured i am just gonna do stainless lines and get me some Hawk HPS pads and some Brembo blank rotors and call it a day…so far on auto-x days i really havent experience any fad so i dont think i need huge breaks…and if i did i would use either an 05 maxima brakes or 90-96 300zx brakes…since both require very little modification to bolt up…but for now i would suggest going with good pads…quality rotors…ss lines…and a complete flush/fill and bleed of the system…even if u dont upgrade fluid which is stupid if u dont cause ur gonna flush the whole system anyway
Yeah, race pads will eat your rotors as well as need considerable time to warm up so they can brake properly.
i have been thinking about upgrading my setup as 95accordvtec stated we were talking, i want AT LEAST to upgrade the rear to disc,…now im wondering if the SVT brakes are larger dia. rotors, if not im also wondering about the mercury cougar setup, as those are four wheel disc with the same bolt pattern and offset…anyone have a clue?
i love the fact that my z has a bomb set of brakes on it from the factory, i just recently got my stillen rotors and i will be throwing on a new set of pads essentially once my car is re-assembled. This thread has been very informative. Tks guys
boardjnky4, I agree with you. This thread has been VERY informative. I think I’m just going to keep my stock setup and upgrade to the SS brake lines, Hawk HPS brake pads, flush the system and put better braking fluid in there. Only about a little over $200 for the setup now compared to $800+ for the SSBC setup. Thanks guys for all your help!
Upgrade the rear to disk only if the car you took the disks off has the same front setup as yours.
The reason is BALANCE.
Braking is a balancing act between fronts and rears. If you have too much rear bias (as when installing a larger then stock rotor in the rear) then the braking system can become outright dangerous. Your rear brakes may lock up in the rain or snow. This will happen under heavier braking or basically when you REALLY need the brakes to work. Picture someone stopping short at a red light in the rain… you doing 45 and getting on the brakes pretty hard… not crazy but hearder then usual… all of a sudden your rears lock up and the ass end starts coming around. Usually by the time it passes 60 degreees or so you cant do shit to recover it. So now you are spinning across the road doing 40 into stopped or oncoming traffic… so much for the “performance” upgrade.
Research and learn before you mess with something as important as brakes or tires. Engine power is not likey to jump out and kill you… brakes and tires will.
Just FYI Stillen rotors = Brembo rotors + Stillen mark up prices.
I would shop around if I were you.
well i orinally bought the brembos but 90 z’s have one problem. For only a few months they were making rotors with a different thinkness. I had originally gotten the brembos and when i put em on, the shit hit the fan. i knew when i put them on that somthing wasnt right cause it was a hell of a tight squeeze with the calipers and then the wheel wasnt spinnign freely. thought mayube that the calipers just had to set themselves so i took it for a two house drive.get two houses and i started to hear a god awful noise and smoke is starting to come from the wheel well. get back to my house take the wheel of to discover that the rotor was actually rubbing on my caliper and it was metal on metal and ruined the rotor and fucked up part of my caliper. So I determined that this rotor couldnt possibly be the correct application. Did some more research to dicover that a few models in the beginning of produciton had thinner rotors and such so i had to return the ones i had and tried to find anothe brembo pair for my car. no such part exists so i went over to stillen’s site and they had one listed so yea thats the only place that i could find it. and im pretty sure these rotors are not manufactured by brembo but possibly another brake company who’s name i cannot recall at this time. so yeah i got screwed by having to pay out the ass for drilled rotors
I guess maybe I could chime in since I am back at work now…
(One point to consider, since I am going to possibly bash a few “other” brake kit manufacturers out there, and I work for a brake company, I am going to say this first: I am NOT speaking for SSBC, and nothing I say here should be attributed to SSBC. I am purely giving this to you from my own personal EXPERIENCE, and my own personal knowledge on this subject. I do not want ANYONE on here saying, “Well SSBC said this and that…” No, SSBC didn’t say andy of this, Tom Klemann said this…. Basically, I don’t want to see any harm to my employer come about because of this…)
RX3 has said most of the valid points that I am going to touch on…
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Your cheapest option would be to upgrade the stock system. By upgrading the stock system, I mean to upgrade the rotors, although not 100% necessary if your stockers are in good condition, stainless steel lines and good pads. Your stainless steel lines by far are going to give you the best pedal feel", and decrease your stopping distance a small amount because they make your calipers faster acting due to the stock rubber lines not flexing as much. They will make your pedal feel a lot stiffer due to you eliminating line flex. I will say that the most drastic change you can make to a stock system is to upgrade to stainless lines. However, upgrading to a more agressive brake compound will by far be the most performance upgrade to the stock system. What I mean is the pads will give you the decreased stopping distances, and the lines will give you the better feel of the brakes. I went this route on my Celica, and had very favorable results. At AutoX, With the upgrades lines/pads & rotors, I really liked the setup because the feel was there along with the decreased stopping distances. Most people will be happy for some time by just doing these simple upgrades. You really should try it first to see if that will satisfy you in terms of the feel of the car and what you are looking for. This is a great street optionbecause you are not harming any of the original brakes or brake system of the car, you are just merely fixing what the OEM manufacturer thought was “Good enough” for the average Joe Blow.
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Big brake kits… Awwww shit, here comes a huge debate… There are so many things to say, so if this jumps around a little, my apologies.
First off, people want to talk about balance of the brake system. This is an interesting subject, mostly because of all the stuff (Being other brake manufacturers) I am familiar with, and have had the opportunity to play with. I don’t mean to know any companies out there, but including SSBC, I can see that there are faults for every company out there.
Lets start first with the balance subject. Lets take Stoptech or Brembo for instance. Brake balance, you say that Stoptech has their brake balance down, then why is it that they offer a kit for my old Celica 7th gen, and one for my EVO using the same calipers? How could you possibly have brake balance down when both of those kits use their ST40 brake calipers? You are talking a 2900lb fully loaded vs. a car that is 3,300lb fully loaded. (Fully loaded meaning just me and a full tank of gas). How is that possible? I think that most of you people on here are smart enough to know that that is not possible using the exact same caliper! (BTW, we at SSBC are developing a new line of calipers that have variable piston sizes in the same calipers, just as a small not that we are up-and-coming in the brake world. (Also as a cheap shot that you should look at our products as we are coming out with some seriously killer shizzle soon…))
Sooo, what does it come down to to achieve the balance? Your proportioning valve! Think about this, all of us brake manufacturers are guilty of this, the only way to achieve a proper brake balance on a car is to size the caliper for the specific car’s weight and dynamics. I don’t think that there is a brake manufacturer out there that can afford to have 400 different calipers for 400 different cars. It all comes down to the proportioning valve and the end user to properly balance the brakes after you have installed the brakes. (Keep in mind that you NEVER EVER EVER!!! Install a proportioning valve on your FRONT brakes, only the rear. You ALWAYS want MAX line pressure running to your front brakes, you always want to decrease your rear brake bias to match the front’s.)
OK, I just touched on that subject, so now lets go with the big brake upgrades and what not.
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Yes, you can do only a front big brake kit and not the rear, and achieve favorable results. Yes, it will screw up the bias a little, but in most cars, you will see a definite performance gain without very negligible effects. (BTW, I did it for a short time on the Celica, and didn’t see any unfavorable results. Now, remember, just because I did it on a Celica, doesn’t mean that you can do it on your car, Thus, I cannot speak for all cars out there.) -
Big brakes are good for street cars to an extent. Zero, you are correct in saying that big brakes need heat to work properly, but that ONLY depends on what pads you are using. If you run a pad like a Hawk HPS, it will work just fine. Now, if you step up to a race pad and use it on the street, you will probably see very little gain because a full race pad needs heat to work better. As long as you put the CORRECT pads on for your application, you will be OK. Using your big brakes on the street are great, I loved them in the Celica, and after using them for quite awhile, I will always look to at a minimum go with upgrading the OEM stuff for better feel. It was nice having big brakes on a street car because I could stop faster if I did make a mistake, and judged a corner wrong, or if a deer ran across the road. (This did happen once in the course of owning the car with a true Big Brake kit, and I really do owe it to the Big Brake kit for not disfiguring the car and deer when it ran out in front of me.) After doing several panic stops, I was a true believer that even for street use on a stock car, it is worth it for a big brake kit. It is a performance modification that you don’t need to have a fast car for, and I truly believe that. Think of it as a SAFETY modification, not a pointless mod if you don’t have a fast car. -
One other thing to consider is in this mod world we live in, you are almost always slapping on bigger wheels than what came on the car stock. If you go to a larger wheel, even if it’s lighter than stock, you are increasing the necessary effort needed to stop the car the same as OEM. Now, most people would argue this, and most of the time it doesn’t hold true only because you are putting stickier tires on the car because with your different wheels you are not going to slap a set of shitty tires on the car. The stickyness of the tires enables the car to brake harder without loosing valuable traction, so it would almost seem that going to the larger wheels is negligible. Now, if you put the same tires on the wheels you just bought, in the same size, you would see that this would hold true. But, this is almost never the case. -
To rehash on my previous point, running bigger brakes, or even and upgraded OEM setup is a great modification to do because it increased the performance aspect of your car, with a huge emphasis on the SAFETY of your car, hence being able to stop it in shorter distances. Us avid AutoX’ers know that the longer you can wait to brake, the faster you can drive your car. The stonger brakes you have without losing traction, the faster you can drive your car because you will be able to hold your speed longer entering a turn than the next guy. (I noticed that at a few AutoX’s that I was at, watching when some of the faster drivers started to brake, and I noticed that I was able to go sometimes up to 20ft farther into the turn before getting on the brakes.)
Now, with all that said, I truly believe that one aspect of a car that should never be overlooked is the brake system. The brake system is imperative to the SAFETY of the car. If you do ANYTHING as far as mod’s to make you car faster, you are going over and beyond what the OEM manufacturer designed the car for. Think of it this way: The OEM only designed your car for the average user, Joe Blow, who drives the car back and forth to work and on errands. They never intended the car to be driven in any sort of performance way. The brakes that were designed for the car were only designed with this in mind, and only designed to be good enough for day-to-day use. The minute you go above and beyond this by modding your car, your brakes are now not up-to-snuff. At a minimum, I would go with the upgrading of the OEM set-up, but, if you do have the cash, increasing the SAFETY of your car should never be bashed. Even if your car is not modded, upgrading the brakes is a good thing to do because it enables you to brake faster for the many unforeseen events that happen out on the road today.
Now, I was going to go into why you should buy our stuff, but I will save that stuff for a different post.
So with all that said, I will give you the cliff notes:
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Upgrading the brakes on your car is NEVER a bad thing, EVEN IF YOU ARE STOCK. (THINK: SAFER) -
If you do go with big brakes and you go only front, you can correct it with a proportioning valve, which we do sell at SSBC. -
At a minimum, upgrade your OEM stuff with minimally: Stainless lines & better pads. Rotors only if you need them, or just want to get them “new looking” again. -
Upgrading to a big brake kit for street use is an excellent thing to do for all the reasons above. (Only if you have the extra $$ for the difference in upgrading the OEM vs. Aftermarket kit.)
There are plenty of people, knowledgeable people on this board that will tell you and can give you first hand experience on what it is like with a big brake kit. (And I think that most of the people that are running a true big brake kit will tell you that they would do it again.)
With that said, I am to busy now at work to read through my post again to see if I missed anything, or left out anything. I will leave it up to all you guys to ask more questions.
:tup: awesome write up. it makes sense that it would be the pads that determine whether or not it should be used for racing and not the calipers. Thanks a lot.
Bump, because my fingers hurt after typing all that…
muchos gracias.
answered the few remaining questions i have/had.
:tup: for j00
-Nick