For DD, I use StopTech's Street Performance pads (get them from Rock Auto, great value). They can take a lot of heat and have a consistent feel. They dust, but the dust isn't corrosive and is easy to clean. Have even used them on track the few times I've taken the DD to a track day (at MSR-C, a light braking track).

Sorry, but I was thinking of any comparison tests done with such brands as RAYBESTOS, WAGNER, BENDIX, FERODO, DURALAST, ETC, etc,etc......
Super average cars like Toyota Camry, Honda Civics, Accords, Fords, Chevy Cavalier. I think of Hawk, StopTech, Carbotech, etc as a level that doesn't cater to thousands of models. I'm looking for the secret sauce. If I do the brakes on my sister in law's mini van, I want to be able to say that tests show this brand stops 5 ft shorter than the other brands. This could the difference between the $500 deductible kicking in or not. (This theory applies to tires also, stopping power vs mileage)
Being an industry insider I was hoping you could point us to evidence not anecdotes. Thanks for your help,
-Jeff

Carbotech makes pads and drum shoes for the cavalier... mother fucking performance drum shoes.

Not to get too off topic, but there are often commonalities between different offerings from the same manufacturer of vehicles that allow a swap to a larger or different design caliper to fit your vehicle. For instance, certain years of Toyota Tacoma can upgrade to a first generation Tundra caliper as a direct bolt on. And early first gen Tundras can upgrade to later first gen Tundra calipers, which have larger pistons and pads and fit the same rotors.

Excellent post. Finding the balance between initial bite, Mu, and modulation is key, and more often than not mis-selected by a driver that is making bad assumptions. Modest initial bite and a boatload of modulation are good things, but getting to that point requires finding a pad that matches the tires, suspension geometry, and aero that make up the total grip available in any given circumstance.

that is true. Allot of manufactures will keep a knuckle or the caliper bolt pattern and offset to aid in some kind of cost saving measures. i actually have no idea why they do that. but they do.

Remember in a braking system "more" is not better, it's just more. remember we are trying to build a complete a braking package.Taking a caliper from one car, and adapting to the other. before you do this you need to take some considerations into account. piston area in the calipers, Rotor offset, and overall braking balance.

Piston area.

Brake Tq can only be changed by 3 Dynamics in a brake system, Rotor Size, Pad compound, and hydraulic advantage. Hydraulic advantage the difference in size between your master cylinder, and your caliper pistons. if you want more Tq increase your pistons, less decrease your pistons. same goes for the master cylinder. you want more TQ? decrease your Master cylinder size. it will increase your hydraulic advantage. ***before we go out messing with master cylinder sizes and piston sizes there is a point of no return.*** the aspect that nobody thinks about but is important has to do with the brake pedal. As a pedal travels thru it's motion you do lose some advantage the further away from the driver it gets. We find at almost 90* on most pedal assemblies the driver would lose leverage. loss of that leverage would make the pedal harder to push. by decreasing the master cylinder size, or increasing piston size you're increasing the distance the pedal needs to travel. so it will take less effort from your foot to stop, but your trading that effort for pedal distance. try and keep the sweet spot of the pedal (@90*) at the point of where you start to modulate your brakes.


Rotor offset

Declaration happens exponentially faster than acceleration. think of our miata's, with 500hp almost every stock component will snap under that much power and acceleration. every miata can decelerate 4x faster than a 500hp miata can accelerate. the idea that i'm trying to put into everyones mind is 2000hp but in reverse. Everyone would agree that is allot of force. that's the force your braking components are under. When we design a big brake kit, the rotor needs to be squarely centered in between the hub bearings in order to stop the bearing from getting torn to shreds. as an example of what not to do, I bring up the unnamed unethical corvette shop again. They built their own big brake kit for c5/c6 corvettes and proclaimed it was "better than brembo.". that was a fed flag for me because brembo is a multi billion dollar a year brake company, and these guys are 4 idiots with a cnc machine. first question i asked them was "did you center the rotors in between the wheel bearings?" they answered with "why?", to me that means 'NO we didn't think of that'. every kit they installed on peoples cars blew out one skf corvette wheel bearing ($300-$500ea), this happens at every event. so make sure when you go to an non-oem rotor that the rotor offset is identical.

Overall balance

Big piston calipers, huge rotors can make your braking system feel like complete garbage. A personal example. before i was a brake rep or knew anything about brakes, i did a track day. i took a set of porter fields street pads out and burned them up. I absolutely cooked the snot out of them. They didn't like to work, but they would slow the car down. I knew the pads where toast, so i ordered a set of hp+ pads. I couldn't tell you why i ordered fronts only, and left the toasted porterfield pads in the back. I beaded in the hp+ on the street and thought "man these feel much better.". I went to an auto cross the next weekend. The track started with a long straight followed by a sweeping right turn. first run, I charged hard, came to the braking Zone, reached for the brakes, and there was nothing but white smoke. I flew 10 yards off the track and into a berm. Two big black marks from my front tires lead all the way off the track. My Front tires had all the braking power in the world, the rears were nowhere to be found. to put it into engineering terms the Fronts where at 90% braking and the rears were around 10%. the new pads had an increase of 30% more TQ, to yield to 90% worse overall performance. Although i had "upgraded" the Front brakes, it gave me worse performance than if i had left the burnout pads on the car. Yes you can increase the caliper sizes and get more torque out of the front wheels, but without balancing that increased TQ to the rear you're going to make the braking performance (ability to slow the car) worse. the Idea out of a braking system is that you want to use 100% of the tires. 100% of all 4 tires to slow the car. as the car stops weight is transmitted forward. at this point the rear tires have less weight on them and less traction. my point is that,it is not hard to upgrade rear braking components to handle the lightened traction. but everyone seems to forget that we do have brakes on the rear of the cars that need love too.



to answer your question. yes, you can bolt allot of equipment onto "other" hubs. without balancing the equipment out F->R then you're not really building a better braking system. make sure those rotors are centered. or the money you save avoiding an engineered brake kit will go toward wheel bearings. watch out for how much you increase piston area or you might need more pedal stroke than is available to you.

Quick Rant about braking systems and Journalists..
a few months ago jalopnik posted an article about upgrading a miata to sentra brembos. I was pulling my F*%king hair out when they did this. rule 1 the didn't center the rotors. They are going to blow threw wheel bearings. rule 2 they didn't even look at the piston area of the calipers. the sentra has a 38x42mm piston Dim. that equals out to 3.9in^2 of caliper area. A factory miata has 3.17in^2. sure that doesn't sound like allot. until you realise it's 23% larger. that combined with the larger rotors you'll have 25-30% more Brake torque on a chassis that has over weighted front brake bias. This is Stupid, Dangerous, and incredibly irresponsible. the thing that pisses me off about jalopnik journalists is that they really don't give a shit, if the do care they are f&$King retarded. all they want to do is throw some words onto a blog and to-hell with people that die following their advice. They have taken the idea of let's spend money to make this worse, to an extreme. But hell, now it says brembo.. :crx:

Go with the v8roadsters 11.75" BBK. It has a proprietary caliper* spacer that allows for additional clearance over the TSE kit. For instance, they fit under my 15x8 gen 1 6ul's with no spacer when the TSE kit would need either a 5mm or 10mm spacer.

EDIT: *originally said rotor when I meant caliper.

Their proprietary hat is what allows more clearance. We use an OTS Wilwood hat which means we're stuck with wherever the rotor ends up. Our Gen2 kit will use a similar proprietary hat to allow more clearance than the Gen1 kits have.

you're going to have it centered over the wheel bearing right?

Is everything with braking components a "test and see" proposition or is there a way to determine with *math* what should work best in a modified system? For example, would you be able to take the area of my Dynalite's pistons, the swept area of the 11.75 rotors, and similar measurements of stock '96 rear calipers and rotors and have a good idea what pad compound or pad compound stagger I should employ with secondhand Hoosiers? If yes, do share your recommendation for my setup. As you know, I already have your PF01's up front.

This post censored in order to slow to progress of knowledge entropy.

Then somebody please spread me some sheet!

<<<@!1!@>>>




I have one for a fsae brake system I designed a few years ago. The calcs are all very simple. I can send it over if you like. Fred Phun has a book on spec'ing brake system components which is a good read.

this might get you going. There was another online one I found a while back that matched my own spread sheet . I'll post it if I can find it

Brake Calculator | Brake Bias Calculator | Automotive Brake System Calculator | BRAKE POWER

Mine got lost in a boating accident, I mean a hard drive reformat. I havent had a need to remake it. It was cool because you could solve forwards and backwards.

I'm leaning this way. Will it reuse my current calipers (and, by extension, stock of brake pads)?

When will your Gen 2 kits be out, Sav? If I can avoid having to use spacers, so much the better.

Edit: The V8roadsters site says their kit now uses Dynapro calipers. Those are a step up, right (stiffer)? The downside, I guess, is that it uses different pads.

He just switched to dynapro calipers. My kit has dynalite calipers. Give him a call and see if you can use your current calipers.

Cool thread, I've learned a lot already.

OK, here's mine: I usually struggle with a (maybe perceived) lack of feedback from my brakes. Meaning I don't seem to get much indication via the pedal that the tires are on the verge of locking up, already locked up, etc. So, do I need to just get better at feeling the brakes out? Or is there something I can do to the system to improve this?

Relevant brake specs: OEM rotors/calipers, DTC-60 pads F/R, ducts on the fronts, stainless lines.

In reference to your earlier post in regards to caliper wear due to flex, why are there no solid sleeve option for the guide pins?

I only say that due to them being available on my VW Jetta, and they improved brake response and "numbness" dramatically. Probably one of my favorite things I've done to my TDI.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1414280333

absolutely there is a way to determine the equal and balanced level of braking. all i need is the weight at all 4 corners (with driver), center of gravity on the chassis, and i can find the rest of the information online. We do have a spreadsheet but it's setup for dual master cylinders. some modifications would be needed for a single mc with a booster.

I like that you started the questions with "perceived". i get allot of feedback that the end result is driver error, and the driver doesn't want to listen. it's hard to tell someone they are "driving like an idiot" tactfully. i thank you for that.

Generally Powered braking systems (vacuum brake booster) are numb. without a true manual system it is very difficult to detect lock up with your foot. is that your problem? i would say maybe but i'm not 100% sure. it might be a result of incorrect pads. anser me a few more questions, What kind events are you doing, what kind of tires (age, brand, model), and how much does the car weigh (ish)? also tell me about when you are getting lock up. go threw the turn in your mind from start of the braking zone, to track in, apex, and track out... FYI if you're having braking problem @track out it's because you're spinning out of control..


From my experience making a stock caliper be good and last at motorsports is like making a donkey run the Kentucky derby. Donkeys are strong animals that can carry a lot of weight, but they are not fast. most oem calipers are from iron. oem's use iron not because it's strong but because it's cheap. oem calipers use a single piston not because it's better, but because it's cheap. catching a trend? once heat gets into oem calipers they are basically fried. the dust boots like to catch on fire, and one those met the caliper O ring will be toast too. with the willwood caliper kit being so inexpensive for a miata it's hard to ignore it. If you're looking to spend money on your brakes don't try to make the donkey fast.