I saw something like that in a super cars maint manual once, they said to use a 19mm socket between each pair of pistons, apply brakes, then use a prybar to center them. I love my old muscle cars, just use a c-clamp!
You're always limited by tire grip, both for acceleration and deceleration. Too big and you lock up too fast, there is a sweet spot to be had with the tires taken in to account.
Also bigger doesnt always mean greater clamp force, you may need a bigger master cylinder to move enough fluid for the bigger/higher-count pistons, but bigger master cylinders apply less pressure, so depending how much you increase caliper surface area you may need to increase brake assist or switch to a dual master pedal box with different pedal ratio because the single master cylinder option may not be optimal.
Generally you can increase your disc size without increasing your caliper and change the caliper mounting bracket. You get the same pedal feel without changing the braking characteristics but increase heat dissipation.
people cant seam to understand the gain of a big brake kit.... the statement... too big and you lock up to fast... and tire grip... if your doing 25 mph a front drum will lock up a soft compound race tire.... but would do nothing at 150 mph... overall tire height ... and driving habits... and what speeds you are driving at and trying to stop at will prove the true gains of a big brake kit
I'm a track guy myself. typically the first upgrade to brakes, is high quality rotors, braided lines and better brake pads. the better rotors will be able to handle more heat. and upgrade brake pads will not fade with high heat. I wouldn't recommend track pads for something that you will drive on the street. they typically need quite a bit of heat before they start to work. if you're experiencing quite a bit of body roll in corners, try upgrading the sway bars. if you go to stiff on the springs to keep the body level, you will end up with a car that will get real loose real easy. especially turning or breaking over bumps.
@@x808drifter there’s only 2 scenarios in which sway bars are useless, straight line racing and off roading. In straight line racing there’s no much side to side movement going on (if the car is set up correctly and the driver knows what they’re doing). When off roading you actually want each suspension corner to act fully independently and sway bars prevent that. For OEM econo cars, front sway bars add safety by tweaking the suspension for understeer while keeping front spring rates comfortable so in an emergency situation it’s less likely for the tail of the car to let loose. For luxury and sport cars sway bars allow for better tuning of spring rates while controlling body roll. And for racing applications sway bars allow for better control of side to side car movement and focus the spring rates for front and rear movement and balance. Sway bars have great utility when set correctly and yet are very undervalued by people.
@@Patrick-pu4eb both sway bars and springs change body inertia the difference is that sway bars only change inertia side to side while springs affect both side to side and front and back inertia. It isn’t a matter of them being useless, it’s a matter of using them properly for the application.
Rob, when ever doing a big brake upgrade with used calipers you should pull out each piston and mark it so you know what position is came out of. and replace the O-rings. They are very cheap and you won't have to worry about the old rings (who knows what shape they are in) leaking on the track when getting abused. Also make sure to use good synthetic hi-temp brake fluid and flush out all the old shit. Don't want the brake fluid boiling at the track and you can't brake and hit a barrier. Cheers.
Define "synthetic", you don't want to use a silicone based fluid because it gets 'spongey' when hot. A premiun high performance fluid is plenty good enough - it's not like he's running deep into the red disk heat with the pads he'll be using.
The pistons aint supposed (or hardly) to touch the cilinder walls, so the are interchangeable. The rings needs to be replaced offcourse. We do that at every time we service our cars after a race weekend. (BMW E30 M3 DTM cars)
@@arnold9861 They're interchangable between like bore sizes more because of the larger bore clearances and still relatively tight piston tolerances. However, marking them during removal is actually a good idea as it allows cross-checking if there's any sign of damage - there should be nothing, but sometimes...
@@gordowg1wg145 the marking of the pistons in my case is to help with reassembly. My front calipers have 3 different piston sizes and they are very similar. Just make it go smoother.
A lot of "Yes, kind of but not actually" going on with this brakes discussion. To elaborate on Rob's explanations here. Benefits: -Larger brakes can help with braking force due to leverage (trying to stop a wheel by grabbing the hub is much more difficult than trying to grab closer to the outside) -Larger brakes can help with brake heat by having more thermal mass to absorb brake heating -Larger brakes can help with brake heat by having more surface area to dissipate heat -Larger brakes (more specifically higher pot calipers) can help with brake heat by increasing the braking surface area, requiring less force on a specific location and thus producing less heat. Drawbacks: -Braking ability is directly limited to the traction of the vehicle. If you are already at the edge of that tractive effort, more braking force will not help you stop faster. -Larger brakes weigh more, and higher rotating mass is harder to stop than higher static mass, counterintuitively somewhat decreasing your ability to brake. -Larger brakes weigh more, increasing your unsprung mass, which can have unintended detrimental effects on the handling of your vehicle.
If you can already exceed maximum braking bigger breaks will mainly help you get there faster. If you're driving the car hot for a period of time using the brakes a lot the advantage of less brake fade will come into play. Probably better off saving that for the Nurburgring crowd. Not going to do too much on the street.
larger brakes don't always weigh more, many times smaller stock brakes are actually heavier than a performance big brake kit with 2 piece rotors and properly designed calipers for weight savings
For anyone interested in doing this swap, the front calipers are reversible by swapping the crossover tube and bleeder valve position. Sometimes you can find a good price on a remanufactured right side and can just buy two.
Thanks Rob! Car manufacturers like Porsche spend large sums of money on RnD to develop things such as the brakes, ratios, heat dispersion, cooling, so on. Same goes for most high performance cars coming out from “basic brands”. People just make it complicated by reinventing the wheel so to say. You are low key the Einstein of Cartube right now! Absolute legend!
I just started building my 4th gen Camaro and called Sam Strano for handling advice and everything in this video was literally spoken from the man himself.
@@x808drifter yep, PSI is only half of the story, everyone forgets about flow. The way Banks Power does it, "Manifold Air Density" is the actual way to go, PSI x CFM.
@@x808drifter Right. 8psi on a TD04-13T and 8psi on a GT65 are massively different numbers. I'm always a bit irked when someone leads with their boost numbers and doesn't follow it up with any supercharger/turbocharger specs. Boost alone means nothing.
9:57 agreed. IMO, the biggest gift one can make themselves on any day of the year is getting braided lines, fronts and rears. Improvement to braking, safety, upkeep, everything. So many times, i've recommended braided lines to friends and family and they'd always call the next day after saying something like "holly sh!t what the hell". My aunt said she thought i'd installed racing brakes, all i did was clean her rotors, painted them with some left over rando orange i had, brake pads aaand braided lines. Made a SpongeBob car into a F1. Edit: one sureway to sell people on the extra cost is to make them hold the line as you brake. :))
i think that depends on how bad or faded your old rubber lines are. I have replaced myself and on both cars i noticed 0 difference, both in braking and pedal feel. Actually, most performance vehicles, with enough budget for braided i mean, come with normal rubber lines
I had a tire chain break and wrap around my front axle while heading down a mountain pass one winter. Had I not installed braided lines, the chain would have severed my brake line and I might not have made it.
Rob, you are using used calipers for race applications, rebuild them using new caliper boots. They have seen enough heat cycle and age. Rubber boots crack. Also clean up pistons using steel wool.
Really good video. Bigger brakes are absolutely about stopping repeatedly and bigger just means more surface area to dissipate heat in between hard braking zones on a race track. If you want to stop faster you need bigger/better tires, good suspension and good brakes.
Came here looking for a comment like this. I don't see any explanation given but I'm guessing there was some copyrighted music used for the wrenching B roll shots & had to be muted for monetization.
Did I miss a payment on sound for some parts of the video? I don’t see any other comments mentioning the sound cutting out randomly in the second half of the video
Simplified intelligence is paramount for explaining concepts to people who either have their mind set to a certain way of thinking or introducing an explanation to a beginner. Perfect video, like most of your content.
I put the front C5 brakes on my C4 with Baer two piece rotors. Also installed a Doug Rippie Brake Bias Spring to direct more pressure to the rear brakes to compensate for the bigger fronts. Love the setup the difference is huge.
I work at a gm dealership and its ultra risky to compress pistons with a bare tool contacting the piston face. They're composite and can be cracked. Its best to put a old brake pad or small block of wood as a medium to prevent damage. I think I saw one of the pistons with a crack on one already. But also, you do not have to pull the entire brake caliper off to do pads on those. Although they are individual brake pads, you're supposed to pull the pins out from the outside with a T40 torx and you just do them one at a time since the pistons will want to pop back out as you collapse one and try to collapse a second. They're also really easy to install upside down, I've seen it frequently where visually the brake pads look thick but since they're upside down the material overhangs past the rotor on the outside when in reality they've worn. Food for thought.
i always just use big knipexes idk were they 560mm size but if that doesnt have enough force to put piston in then the piston is 90% of the time seized
I love how Rob made the normal stuff look simple. I installed BBK on my 228i and I fully agree with everything he said. BBK are beneficial for sure but it all depends on how you configure it. Overall, they increase the stopping performance.
I'm glad I watched this, I had done about 4-5 hard stops in my car once and had the pedal to the floor on the last one and barely stopped on time. Probably my brake lines/fluid got too hot with everything else
THANK YOU!! I’m so surprised how many people don’t believe me when i explain that if you can lock up your tires, then tires are the limit for braking distance. Bigger brakes are not going to help then. Now I can use this video to explain it to people visually.
You have to consider hydraulic advantage as well. For the same size master cylinder and the same pedal pressure, large surface area caliper cylinders will apply more force. Installing WAY bigger calipers can actually be an issue because it makes the brake pedal extremely touchy. You can always compensate for that by installing a larger master cylinder matched to your larger caliper.
the pedal travel and hydraulic advantage(less pedal effort) will both increase if calipers size are increased, it will conversly decrease with the size of the mastercylinder. There are other mechanical advantages too like grabbing the rotor further and further away from the center.
As someone who's not a regular subscriber, I'm blown away by the knowledge on display and explained here! Jeez, I feel so much smarter after watching this video. Great job, Rob!
On the physics front, you're correct. Between engineering and physics, a certain size brake is necessary to stop a certain amount of weight, but if you want it reliable and safe, it needs to be xx dimension and materials. Combining the two with speed makes things a bit more interesting, to which you also enter the contact patch of your tire. More often than not, increasing your tire or moving to a sticker compound will make your brake system more effective. Reducing overall weight makes Everything better.
What you mean? Yes he got pressure a little bit wrong when talking about break fluid. Breakfliud will experience pressure just like air. It just wont compress like air or so.
Reasons I completely replaced the brake system on my 1988 Mustang. I'll lead off with what I went to. 1995 brakes, completely. 1- gained rear disc brakes. 2- larger rotors for better thermal mass (like you stated) so they can handle higher speed stopping and repeated stopping for a longer time. 3- better design. The 1988 front rotors have the wheel bearings built into the rotor. Meaning to swap the rotor you have to pull everything apart. The later 1994 and up have the modern rotors that are separate from the hubs and wheel bearings (less chance of cooking the bearings too). The other design change which I've never seen anyone else do this (not saying it hasn't been done back then by someone else) is the calipers only need a single bolt removed to rotate the caliper up and away from the rotor to swap pads. Far easier than any other vehicle I've worked on including the rear brake caliper on my 1994 Honda VFR which is nearly identical except it's 2 bolts of the 3 that need removed to do the exact same thing. The downside, I needed to gut my proportioning valve and remove it's guts before re-installing. Then install a separate valve on the rear brake line between the prop valve and the split at the rear axle. (It's on the firewall). I also had to replace the master cylinder to a 1993 Cobra part (not a big deal since you can get them new like I did). And the minor downside, I can only run 5 lug wheels now because I literally swapped everything including the spindles and the complete rear axle from a 95. Note: Only people who know these cars will see something wrong with my car because I grabbed a set of new edge v6 wheels which are Tri Bar wheels and they have the mustang symbol on the center caps. If they realize what they are looking at they should know it's 5-lug wheels and the fox platform only had 4-lug wheels except for the 93 Cobra and Cobra R. Another interesting fact, the race only 93 Cobra R had factory Tri Bar wheels like the wheels I have right now, except they were painted all black with a machined lip. Same exact dimensions and offset.
The stainless steel braid is a thin outer layer that is designed to flex in all directions and cannot prevent the hose from expanding, its main function is to protect the teflon inner hose against abrasion with a secondary function of looking good;)
This is a great video, if your brakes can lock up your tires then the limiting factor in slowing down is your tires. The bigger the size of the brakes doesn’t help so much with slowing down quicker, it instead helps with slowing down in the same or similar distance the next 10 or 20 times you hit them hard right after your first stop. Big brakes help by keeping your brakes from overheating and getting horrible brake fade. Carbon Ceramic brakes help by being able to handle heat much better then traditional metal rotors
Just a bit of info from the guy who made all these calipers at PBR in Melbourne Australia, The 6pot Z06 calipers used the same dia. pistons / bores. This allowed for easier manufacturing (machined in 2 setups on a 5 axis Chiron machining center) also the used of six individual pads eliminates tapered pad wear.
Correct in how the OEM makes changes throughout the life cycle of the chassis, even with my truck, the 97-02 had single piston fronts and drum rears but for 2003 and 2004 the last two years of that same generation (97-04) they went to 2 piston front calipers and rear wheel disc, additional to the rear ABS; all Bosch, the vender Dodge had during that era. Now they run Brembo for the SRT lineup. Before that was the swap to do, now with Brembo, and other aftermarket kits, you don't have to dive through pick-aparts for "OEM plus" Youre also limited to what you have, hub/wheel stud spacing, unless you swap to a different pattern.
different brake fluid brands have different compressibility specs. the difference is noticeable. i used castrol SRF for a long time because of the high wet boiling point. but then switched to Torque RT700 and notice a big difference in pedal feel.
Ive bee upgrading to brakes stainless braided lines for a long time, its really the only way to upgrade your brakes as such. All it really does, it give you more break force with better control to the wheel. This extra control and more direct force application does result in a shorter and better braking performance. Usually that is adequate to upgrade brake performance on stock brakes quite a bit. Helps a lot with old Hiluxes, from hard braking to full lock up capability.. especially when towing..
Take a shot every time Rob says "Ratio"! Such a great video on a popular upgrade, very interesting stuff and I love how contagious your excitement and enthusiasm are!
Rob Dahm just made me consider buying 6 piston brembos for my stock 1989 nissan micra (basically a small first gen VW golf) with 55 hp stock engine…. I think we should appreciate that Rob is here teaching us instead of trying to sell us stuff 😂 i would buy 8 cars, 6 rotations around the earth worth of tefzel (or however you write it) wire, 19 haltech units along with about 6 mill worth of cool sh*t if he just explained why its good to me 😂
It's important to understand nothing is gained for free. Every improvement is always offset to an extent. A larger brake kit with a larger wheel and tyre is also (usually) an increase in unsprung weight that needs to be controlled and an increase in rotational inertia that needs to be stopped which will increase heat. Everything is part of system. When it comes to brakes the limiting factor is always the tyres relationship to the surface. ABS is completely governed by that.
Great points. The things you mentioned are the same things I'm grappling with while considering how to improve brake performance on my 2004 VW GTI 2.8L VR6. I feel a bigger brake kit is warranted. I'm frustrated with OEM rotors warping sooner than reasonable under normal use on roads and highways. The car is not tracked. Lately I considered upgrading to Brembo calipers, pads, braided lines, and rotors. However, the car only has 17" wheels from the factory and may need bigger wheels to fit the brake kit, and to adequately pair the kit with larger tires for proper stopping capability. The biggest I want to go is 18". Anything bigger would look absurd and excessively detract from MPG and general handling. If I can get the benefit from bigger Brembo rotors and calipers while continuing to use 17" wheels this would be ideal. Effects of this on safety and handling also need to be considered. I will discuss this with a Brembo factory representative once they return my message. As you indicated, there's give and take with every change. I'm looking for a good balance of all attributes with no sacrifice to safety.
Just noticed this video shows the car with the single exhaust exit. It’s always weird to think the order in which channels upload content isn’t necessarily the chronological order of filming
11:15 This is the second thing that gives you a good response: a single brake-pad for every piston. 18:24 The good ol' reliable optical system. I've learned on a system like this (in Germany you are a trainee for 3,5 years to become a "Geselle" [journeyman]). I think you learn more about chassis/steering geometry than with a computerized one.
Man what a detail explanation of every brake component. After your video I feel like I can do a BBK change for any car. You got my subscribed man. A very great video. Very honest telling. Great camera work. God blessed you.
I've bought most of the parts for My cars from eBay Motors or Rock Auto. The Most recent part's I purchased from eBay Motors were some R1 Concepts Cross Drilled and Slotted rotors and Ceramic pads. Which work Perfectly and I didn't have to spend an arm and leg to smoother and better braking.
Thank you for making this video so I don’t have to go into this with other car guys who absolutely think they’re right as they’re trying to explain why their $10,000 brake kit makes their car faster. Got 18k springs in the rear of my fortune auto coils in my sti perfect setup, no longer bouncy and launches super flat because 12k springs weren’t good enough for 600hp awd.
My dad upgraded the brakes on our 2015 F-150 Lariat, and I'll say, it's way nicer being able to lightly press the pedal and stop like it's nothing. Drilled and slotted rotors with some high performance pads, works really well for around town and highway use
You can go too big on breaks if you never get them hot enough. You'd be surprised how well good pads can do wonders over going to larger calipers and rotors for most applications. To save weight, two piece rotors go a very long way, but again, in most applications it's uncessary. I like the idea of seeing what OEM options are available. For example, 30MM on a 300ZX vs the 25MM
Rob I Do wheel alignments at work most days . it's no point setting up spring rates or ride height without weight in the car. we set cars up with 75kg in each seat to mimick 2 people in the car or a family car 40kg in the back each side ..please think about it
Your rotor is a lever, you make them larger and they apply more leverage and thus it will apply more torque and lock up the wheel easier but that does not equate to braking distance shortening. Mostly larger rotors are just used for the thermal advantage like you say.
given a set applied foot pressure, the braking leverage will decrease stopping distance. To make a smaller rotor brake as well, you would need to kick the pedal harder. In any case the reality is that bigger rotors equal shorter distances on the same vehicle in testing.
@@jamesmedina2062until you lock the tire. Then it does nothing. But you can adjust any brakes to apply more brake for a given amount of pedal pressure.
@@SlyNine Correct. Thats why I said what I did. In other words control is important. Or in other words, increasing pressure but not locking is going to improve braking. With a larger rotor it is not just heat dissipation but you have a larger swept area for clamping with your pads and control is easier. Control is a big deal.
21:41 what you should do is attach a sock it to it so you can draw a hole directly above it and you can slide down a speed wrench and adjust it from the top side. Like they do in NASCAR
I remember seeing that yellow Diablo around town when i lived in SE Mi. Super cool to see it made the move to Socal. I live out near Ventura now. Both of us got sick of that Michigan cold.
I’ve got to C5 big brake kit from Baer on my blown fox body and those twin piston brakes work phenomenally I run 13 inch drilled slotted rotors and I road race and they do not let me down ever
having to go to a larger wheel will also change the ride height and speedo readings so a change to a lower profile tyre would be needed to correct that or a speedo correction box and lowered ride height on the suspencion
You should get some of those coilover knob extensions so that you can adjust your coilover without pulling carpet out of the way. I know they make some for Öhlins and MeisterR stuff, so it shouldn’t be hard to find something compatible with FortuneAuto coilovers
On my 2003 BMW E46 M3 - I upgraded the front brakes from OE single piston to i 335 BMW 6 piston brembos and bigger rotors and I did not notice any difference in stopping but I am betting that's only something you would notice on a track after putting a lot of heat into the brake system not on a weekend cruiser .
Once the brakes are large/strong enough to lock up the tires (or reach the ABS threshold), even on warm, dry, clean, smooth pavement with the stickiest tires you might use on the car...then the only benefit of going larger is heat management so that they will keep doing it repeatedly without degrading. Now there can be other benefits to making changes to your brake system (pedal feel, pedal travel, pad friction levels at various pressures and temperatures, other heat management techniques such as better fluid, front/rear bias balance, etc., but those things are dependent upon a lot of other design factors besides just "bigger."
Totally agree, like you said pad friction levels, even the brake lines mentioned in the video and brake bias tuning you can achieve most of the benefits of a big brake kit without deviating from stock other than the heat soak ability of the extra mass. now, the biggest place where you need bigger brakes is when you increase the wheel size, stock brakes and even with different level pads it still might be scary to stop on lifted trucks and cars running much larger wheels than stock or if you're racing the car in some autocross or doing 1mile speed runs and you need the extra thermal mass.
@@matthewmenteer5673 AND...extra mass is not the only way to absorb more heat energy without exceeding some maximum critical temperature. And alternate path is to figure out how to get the existing mass to SHED that heat energy faster so that it doesn't build up to that maximum critical temperature. Now, whether or not you can figure out how to do that - with more cooling air flow, more vanes/fins or other method of increasing surface area, perhaps actively cooling the brake fluid somehow, etc. - well enough to do the job, I don't know. But it IS a valid path to think about. And consider whether you can engineer a disk strong enough, with a larger diameter, but the same or less mass as the disk you are replacing. For example you could sacrifice expected disk life by using a thinner friction surface, but possibly gain additional lever arm and surface area in the trade-off. I'm certain the big name performance brake manufacturers have engineers that already know all this stuff, but of course they also have to consider expected life span, complexity, manufacturability, cost, etc. They aren't actually seeking maximum performance at the expense of everything else. At least not for their aftermarket big brake kits that target street/track enthusiasts with production cars. The requirements are a little different when F1 engineers design things of course. Hmmmm...I wonder...if we're just dreaming...could you design a brake system that works like a multi-plate wet clutch, and actively cool the fluid? Could you utilize the fluid for activation as well, to eliminate a second pressure system? Could it be made compact enough not to add any unsprung and rotating mass relative to a traditional disk/caliper design? Has somebody else already thought of this?
@@xtnuser5338 you can turn the kinetic energy into 3 things when you're trying to slow down, heat or damage or into potential energy... you could shave off rotors like a lathe with the friction materials hoping the chips would take most of the heat. For the heat, there is only a few options bigger more mass, or more tolerant components like ceramic disc's, fluid braking wouldn't work because it would surely boil and cavitate, even brake torquing a TC you can cause damage in under 10seconds. a wet clutch system won't slip for light braking applications its stacks of rings and friction material meant to multiply the clamping force, it's not meant to slip as the friction would be so concentrated in such a small package. drilled and slotted rotors only mildly help with fade from gassing pads, even forced air to the rotors won't help much as its just simply not enough. exotic materials are really the way to gain extra heat performance of the typical brakes the best solution would be conventional brakes with a KERS type system like aggressive regenerative braking. frankly I'm of the mind that every car should have some sort of regenerative braking, just a system big enough to capture energy from Max GCVW going 90mph to 0. hybrids almost never need brakes replaced due to wear, on your idea of cooling the brakes.... water jet would be the easiest way and cheapest and least exotic way. China does this on some of their trucks, I don't know their limits but they are definitely designed different. some have like 6 dully axels on maybe a 40ft box truck. point is the caliper style brakes are generally found to be the best as far as this application goes. if you combine that with improvements to materials, and with supplemental systems like a KERS or regenerative braking you can get more performance for less of an issue.
@@matthewmenteer5673 It's a lot of fun talking to you! 1. Cutting the rotors in a very controlled manner could be made to work wonderfully! And I'm excited that you even though of it. But of course it wouldn't work for very long. I guess technically that's what we're doing with brake pads now, just not fast enough to remove significant amounts of heat. 2. Air cooling isn't adequate, only because the system isn't optimized for it. One difficulty is of course that during brake usage, they're getting hotter while the airflow is reducing. I mean we're able to keep piston engine heads, and even jet engine internals, cool enough with air alone. We certainly COULD build systems that would keep themselves adequately cooled with air. I suspect the additional equipment required to do it would need another truck to follow you around while you drive though. 3. Wet clutch systems can be smoothly transitioned from full slip to no slip, requiring only proper modulation of a clutch. I think the only real problems with this idea are that: A. It's more complex already, and cooling the fluid would add even more complexity. B. To handle the intense torque of stopping a 3000-lb car from 100-mph in five or six seconds would require quite a pretty heavy duty unit...one that is probably bigger and heavier than a traditional rotor/caliper setup. What do you think about designing the caliper/pad/rotor interface to actually pull heat INTO the caliper, then just running the brake lines (including the caliper fluid volume too) in a closed loop system with a tiny circulating pump and a heat sink of some sort? I think this is a good idea in principle - not super complex, not a lot of extra weight - but I don't know how much heat energy transfer you could actually get from the rotor to the caliper in whatever small unit of time you targeted. Not enough to solve brake problems forever, but it certainly could at least add a very small percentage of improvement to rotor cooling, and definitely could prevent fluid boil.
In rotation, its called a moment arm. Its the same concept as leverage but applied to a radial motion. The bigger the moment arm, the more torque generated at the axis.
The c4 corvette generation folks that uses C5 brakes as upgrade have been know to lock the front brakes, unless you get the c6 set up and use the 340mm rotors front and rear then its just a big brake upgrade but you just don't shoot flames from your rotors as easily
One caliper piston equally opposes the force of the piston on the other side of the caliper. Like pinching a bathroom scale between thumb and forefinger. (reach assumed) The scale reads the force that your thumb exerts toward your forefinger. If the scale reads 5lbs....then you have 5lbs of force exerted by your thumb which can only exist if there is 5lbs resisting that force, which is provided by your forefinger. The total force does not double to become 10 lbs of force. I hope that makes sense. Also, my bathroom scale uses the floor (and the scale's spring) to provide a force to oppose my body weight, otherwise, my 180lbs acting on the scale would read as 360lbs if you added the "acting" force and "opposing" force together.
Another thing about the calipers having pistons each side is equal pad pressure on both side instantly and no chance of disc warping since the single side piston has to rely on the pressure of the 1st piston before it can pull the other side onto the disc from the housing moving.
what are you saying? Warped rotors come from linearity of hub circle to the rotor circle and deviation will cause warping. Also certain rotors are thinner and will warp due to worse heat dissipation. Even the bracketry holding the calipers can contribute to uneven pressures from the pads. How many pistons push the pads is of minimal importance.
I have swapped 2 piston calipers for 6 piston calipers front, and swapped 1 piston calipers for 4 piston rear. I have absolutely no regrets. Nobody I know ever said that their brakes are too big.
Another great video rob and like you I am always hungry for data................experience tells me you should run 0 degrees toe in on the front and rear. Negative toe in will make the wheels return to straight and positive to will allow the wheels to wander. Most street cars run a small amount of toe in. Caster changes the way the car steers ( imagine the angle of the neck on a pushbike ) and brakes as well as changing the camber angle and toe as the suspension moves up and down.
Hey, Rob! Don't know if you know about this or not, but a quick trick for ride comfort when it comes to the car pitching back and forth (which is the movement humans most dislike when it comes to comfort in cars) the cheapest/simplest way to handle it is to have the front suspension frequency be about 3/4 the rear frequency. A real nice round example of that would be a 2hz frequency rear with a 1.5hz front. Just something to think about since you mention the car's comfort as a street car! :D EDIT: Love this video in general, too!
big brake kit on an 18” I think is the sweet spot, fitting larger rotors that require larger wheels (I mean on a proper weight sports car like 1500kg max) only makes the wheels heavier, more unsprung weight, more money, worse ride, worse grip (although more precise). If they overheat then you can add cooling ducts. That’s for performance. if you want looks and don’t want to mess with ducting then ok. In fact I prefer the stock 17” but it’s harder to find tires and fit high performance brakes.
He looks so happy at 7:57 , like all of us when we finally get a nice upgrade to our ride esp when we got a good deal. HEHE, I especially liked the metal sheet and pinky with leverage example u gave. in one min you cover what other youtubers tried with a 15-20mins video LOL
Don't forget the correct selection of brake pad is at least as important - co-efficient of friction and the intended operating heat range are useful tuning aids.
One lesson I learn often when tinkering is that the auto manufacturers are actually not stupid or idiots nor have they missed a big opportunity. They made the best compromise all around for the intended use. If you want to change the intended use for your car, you have to rebalance all of those variables (often with only one install to get it right). Summary: I usually just leave shit alone, it's also cheaper :)
NEED HELP: Any upgraded Pads, Steel Braided Lines, & Rotors suggestions?! (BMW 230i, Bolt Ons, Stage 2 Tune, avg +315hp) To be honest I don't care for a big brake set up for my daily. I am on the route to get upgraded performance rotors & pads for curvy mountain spirited driving with my crew on the weekends and every now and then hard straight line acceleration when I am bored. Maybe I would track it 1-2 a year.
Fortune Auto has come a REALLY long way. I remember when they were effectively a garage operation supplying local drifters in VA Beach. Glad @FortuneAuto has increased their quality of product over the years.
14:46 imagine you get more front bias with the new brakes on while the stock brakes were already having too much force bias on the front. Stock brakes on cars have much more front bias than you would want for fast cornering but that’s for safety. Advanced drivers don’t mind that because they know how to tune the car for their needs.
Had the same brakes on the front of my e46. calipers on those are super chonky, and the offsett on the disk is very low so the caliper comes far out into the wheel, so they are terrible for wheel fitment. Friend of mine runs 10mm larger rotors (e92 m3) with alfa guila quadrofolgio brembo calipers, and has better wheel clearance. Also, rob, you don't have to have the caliper off the car to do the pads, the slider pins are the bolts you see on the outside the caliper, undo those and slite the pad out.
Are those directional rotors? It bugs me when they put two left rotors on cars because the vanes are backwards on one side. Audi does that and it pisses me off.
Comment about the setup - remember to check the ackerman angle. It's important to play with it to get the best grip from the inside tyre. This is essential when changing tires because a wider or stickier tire has a different slip angle so it will need a different ackerman setting. Also, more negative camber is great in corners but reduces braking in a straight line
bigger isn't always better, if you're talking about a street car. how often do you actually need 100% brake force on the street. usually only during panic or emergency braking. stock brakes with street pads are generally enough to lock up the tires or engage ABS. now it's a different story if you take the same car to the track where you'll use 100% brake force multiple times per lap for 15-30 minutes at a time. you'll get brake fade within a few laps. this is where larger brakes comes into play. but the cheapest way to improve brakes on a track car is pad compound. majority of club race cars use stock brakes setup with upgrade pads, fluid and lines.
@@J3n555 ok i know what you mean. As I told someone else there can be many benefits coming from the rigidity of a good system and fixed calipers with only moving pistons. I had pretty good luck with brakes on B5 and B3 and 4 Passats using Pagid brake pads. But a BBK should give you more reserve braking potential which is good for mountain driving or racing track use.
Volvo’s official tool for pushing pistons back on s60/v70r models is a screwdriver between the pad and rotor. It’s in the service manual.
I saw something like that in a super cars maint manual once, they said to use a 19mm socket between each pair of pistons, apply brakes, then use a prybar to center them. I love my old muscle cars, just use a c-clamp!
A drum brake adjustment tool is the best in my experience.
I broke c clam on honda 😂 fml i picked up $40 caliper kit to do the spinning push lol 😅 oopsie @cjm5002
You're always limited by tire grip, both for acceleration and deceleration. Too big and you lock up too fast, there is a sweet spot to be had with the tires taken in to account.
Also bigger doesnt always mean greater clamp force, you may need a bigger master cylinder to move enough fluid for the bigger/higher-count pistons, but bigger master cylinders apply less pressure, so depending how much you increase caliper surface area you may need to increase brake assist or switch to a dual master pedal box with different pedal ratio because the single master cylinder option may not be optimal.
Generally you can increase your disc size without increasing your caliper and change the caliper mounting bracket. You get the same pedal feel without changing the braking characteristics but increase heat dissipation.
Seamless ebay motors integrations 👌
people cant seam to understand the gain of a big brake kit.... the statement... too big and you lock up to fast... and tire grip... if your doing 25 mph a front drum will lock up a soft compound race tire.... but would do nothing at 150 mph... overall tire height ... and driving habits... and what speeds you are driving at and trying to stop at will prove the true gains of a big brake kit
@@RadDadisRad bigger brake rotors also means more weight. More rotating weight.
I'm a track guy myself. typically the first upgrade to brakes, is high quality rotors, braided lines and better brake pads. the better rotors will be able to handle more heat. and upgrade brake pads will not fade with high heat. I wouldn't recommend track pads for something that you will drive on the street. they typically need quite a bit of heat before they start to work.
if you're experiencing quite a bit of body roll in corners, try upgrading the sway bars. if you go to stiff on the springs to keep the body level, you will end up with a car that will get real loose real easy. especially turning or breaking over bumps.
Even better, stop looking at your butt and listen to what your tires say. Maybe you don’t even need sways.
@@x808drifter there’s only 2 scenarios in which sway bars are useless, straight line racing and off roading. In straight line racing there’s no much side to side movement going on (if the car is set up correctly and the driver knows what they’re doing). When off roading you actually want each suspension corner to act fully independently and sway bars prevent that.
For OEM econo cars, front sway bars add safety by tweaking the suspension for understeer while keeping front spring rates comfortable so in an emergency situation it’s less likely for the tail of the car to let loose. For luxury and sport cars sway bars allow for better tuning of spring rates while controlling body roll. And for racing applications sway bars allow for better control of side to side car movement and focus the spring rates for front and rear movement and balance. Sway bars have great utility when set correctly and yet are very undervalued by people.
@@Hartbreak1 Anti-roll bars in the UK.
@@Hartbreak1 nah they useless either way because they mess up the body's inertia. Only useful for track builds
@@Patrick-pu4eb both sway bars and springs change body inertia the difference is that sway bars only change inertia side to side while springs affect both side to side and front and back inertia. It isn’t a matter of them being useless, it’s a matter of using them properly for the application.
idk if it was intentional for rob to do a voiceover saying "EBAY MOTORS" but it was funny af 😂😂😂
I'm sure ebay got a little mad cause ita supposed to be ebay motors specifically that he's doing the ad for not just ebay as a whole
Rob, when ever doing a big brake upgrade with used calipers you should pull out each piston and mark it so you know what position is came out of. and replace the O-rings. They are very cheap and you won't have to worry about the old rings (who knows what shape they are in) leaking on the track when getting abused. Also make sure to use good synthetic hi-temp brake fluid and flush out all the old shit. Don't want the brake fluid boiling at the track and you can't brake and hit a barrier. Cheers.
That damn right.. ain't no shit happen when do proper thing.
Define "synthetic", you don't want to use a silicone based fluid because it gets 'spongey' when hot. A premiun high performance fluid is plenty good enough - it's not like he's running deep into the red disk heat with the pads he'll be using.
The pistons aint supposed (or hardly) to touch the cilinder walls, so the are interchangeable. The rings needs to be replaced offcourse. We do that at every time we service our cars after a race weekend. (BMW E30 M3 DTM cars)
@@arnold9861
They're interchangable between like bore sizes more because of the larger bore clearances and still relatively tight piston tolerances.
However, marking them during removal is actually a good idea as it allows cross-checking if there's any sign of damage - there should be nothing, but sometimes...
@@gordowg1wg145 the marking of the pistons in my case is to help with reassembly. My front calipers have 3 different piston sizes and they are very similar. Just make it go smoother.
A lot of "Yes, kind of but not actually" going on with this brakes discussion. To elaborate on Rob's explanations here.
Benefits:
-Larger brakes can help with braking force due to leverage (trying to stop a wheel by grabbing the hub is much more difficult than trying to grab closer to the outside)
-Larger brakes can help with brake heat by having more thermal mass to absorb brake heating
-Larger brakes can help with brake heat by having more surface area to dissipate heat
-Larger brakes (more specifically higher pot calipers) can help with brake heat by increasing the braking surface area, requiring less force on a specific location and thus producing less heat.
Drawbacks:
-Braking ability is directly limited to the traction of the vehicle. If you are already at the edge of that tractive effort, more braking force will not help you stop faster.
-Larger brakes weigh more, and higher rotating mass is harder to stop than higher static mass, counterintuitively somewhat decreasing your ability to brake.
-Larger brakes weigh more, increasing your unsprung mass, which can have unintended detrimental effects on the handling of your vehicle.
If you can already exceed maximum braking bigger breaks will mainly help you get there faster. If you're driving the car hot for a period of time using the brakes a lot the advantage of less brake fade will come into play. Probably better off saving that for the Nurburgring crowd. Not going to do too much on the street.
Excellent summary bro
larger brakes don't always weigh more, many times smaller stock brakes are actually heavier than a performance big brake kit with 2 piece rotors and properly designed calipers for weight savings
Well written. This should be the top rated comment, not the guy going on about tires.
If your brake can't lock up the wheel. You're doing it wrong.
Alternate title: STOP doing these things when Upgrading Brakes
Alternate title: Big Brakes Went TOO FAR! Gone Sexual.
18 year old gets work done at the shop, doesnt wanna stop
@@lucasschema6874 now that’s an attention getter.
Alternate Title: Customer States Super late buraking secrets revealed
That sounds like a Scotty Kilmer title
I love how rob just said ebay a bunch of times and we got to hear sassy rob say Ebay Motors a couple of times🤣
I agree with all your facts and you are right. However, large rotors and big fixed painted calipers look so good in big wheels.
I'm 5:22 in and I love the instructional aspect of the vid. Learning is a wonderful thing that most don't invest in. Thanks guys,great content!
I love technical information that's well spoken and easy to understand.....thank you for always going the extra mile
For anyone interested in doing this swap, the front calipers are reversible by swapping the crossover tube and bleeder valve position. Sometimes you can find a good price on a remanufactured right side and can just buy two.
Thanks Rob! Car manufacturers like Porsche spend large sums of money on RnD to develop things such as the brakes, ratios, heat dispersion, cooling, so on. Same goes for most high performance cars coming out from “basic brands”. People just make it complicated by reinventing the wheel so to say. You are low key the Einstein of Cartube right now! Absolute legend!
Donut incidentally proved too much pad and caliper can be detrimental when they were installing e-brakes for their 'Hi-Car, Low-Car' series.
The cylinder couldn't give enough pressure right?
I just started building my 4th gen Camaro and called Sam Strano for handling advice and everything in this video was literally spoken from the man himself.
Would love to see a series of these "3 things people get wrong" next one should be "3 things people get wrong about turbos"
I like it
Or boost general.
#1 PSI doesn’t mean anything.
@@x808drifter yep, PSI is only half of the story, everyone forgets about flow. The way Banks Power does it, "Manifold Air Density" is the actual way to go, PSI x CFM.
@@x808drifter
Right. 8psi on a TD04-13T and 8psi on a GT65 are massively different numbers. I'm always a bit irked when someone leads with their boost numbers and doesn't follow it up with any supercharger/turbocharger specs. Boost alone means nothing.
Think there’s a lot more things people tend to get wrong with turbo setups, flow is a pretty key one
9:57 agreed. IMO, the biggest gift one can make themselves on any day of the year is getting braided lines, fronts and rears. Improvement to braking, safety, upkeep, everything. So many times, i've recommended braided lines to friends and family and they'd always call the next day after saying something like "holly sh!t what the hell". My aunt said she thought i'd installed racing brakes, all i did was clean her rotors, painted them with some left over rando orange i had, brake pads aaand braided lines. Made a SpongeBob car into a F1.
Edit: one sureway to sell people on the extra cost is to make them hold the line as you brake. :))
“SpongeBob car” 😂
i think that depends on how bad or faded your old rubber lines are. I have replaced myself and on both cars i noticed 0 difference, both in braking and pedal feel. Actually, most performance vehicles, with enough budget for braided i mean, come with normal rubber lines
The new brake pads probably did the trick.
You painted the rotors?
I had a tire chain break and wrap around my front axle while heading down a mountain pass one winter. Had I not installed braided lines, the chain would have severed my brake line and I might not have made it.
Rob, you are using used calipers for race applications, rebuild them using new caliper boots. They have seen enough heat cycle and age. Rubber boots crack.
Also clean up pistons using steel wool.
Really good video. Bigger brakes are absolutely about stopping repeatedly and bigger just means more surface area to dissipate heat in between hard braking zones on a race track. If you want to stop faster you need bigger/better tires, good suspension and good brakes.
This guy explains it perfectly...
ruclips.net/video/CyH5xOcsXxs/видео.html
Not sure if anyone else experienced it, but audio went out several times and I feel I missed important information. Otherwise, love it!
Came here looking for a comment like this. I don't see any explanation given but I'm guessing there was some copyrighted music used for the wrenching B roll shots & had to be muted for monetization.
Did I miss a payment on sound for some parts of the video? I don’t see any other comments mentioning the sound cutting out randomly in the second half of the video
Simplified intelligence is paramount for explaining concepts to people who either have their mind set to a certain way of thinking or introducing an explanation to a beginner. Perfect video, like most of your content.
I put the front C5 brakes on my C4 with Baer two piece rotors.
Also installed a Doug Rippie Brake Bias Spring to direct more pressure to the rear brakes to compensate for the bigger fronts.
Love the setup the difference is huge.
I work at a gm dealership and its ultra risky to compress pistons with a bare tool contacting the piston face. They're composite and can be cracked. Its best to put a old brake pad or small block of wood as a medium to prevent damage. I think I saw one of the pistons with a crack on one already. But also, you do not have to pull the entire brake caliper off to do pads on those. Although they are individual brake pads, you're supposed to pull the pins out from the outside with a T40 torx and you just do them one at a time since the pistons will want to pop back out as you collapse one and try to collapse a second. They're also really easy to install upside down, I've seen it frequently where visually the brake pads look thick but since they're upside down the material overhangs past the rotor on the outside when in reality they've worn. Food for thought.
i always just use big knipexes idk were they 560mm size but if that doesnt have enough force to put piston in then the piston is 90% of the time seized
I love how Rob made the normal stuff look simple. I installed BBK on my 228i and I fully agree with everything he said. BBK are beneficial for sure but it all depends on how you configure it. Overall, they increase the stopping performance.
I'm glad I watched this, I had done about 4-5 hard stops in my car once and had the pedal to the floor on the last one and barely stopped on time. Probably my brake lines/fluid got too hot with everything else
THANK YOU!! I’m so surprised how many people don’t believe me when i explain that if you can lock up your tires, then tires are the limit for braking distance. Bigger brakes are not going to help then. Now I can use this video to explain it to people visually.
You have to consider hydraulic advantage as well. For the same size master cylinder and the same pedal pressure, large surface area caliper cylinders will apply more force. Installing WAY bigger calipers can actually be an issue because it makes the brake pedal extremely touchy.
You can always compensate for that by installing a larger master cylinder matched to your larger caliper.
Bigger caliper means less advantage though
the pedal travel and hydraulic advantage(less pedal effort) will both increase if calipers size are increased, it will conversly decrease with the size of the mastercylinder. There are other mechanical advantages too like grabbing the rotor further and further away from the center.
Thanks Rob! It's been a while since your videos popped up, but good to see. you are doing what you love, and these videos are educational, as usual.
Fun fact - tires are the way to shorten braking distance, grippier and wider will do it.
I'm 90% sure the retaining pins are removable while mounted to the car to preclude caliper removal for pad changes
Yeah usually with brembos you can just smack the pins out idk about these specifically though
@@yamboy666 You can buy replacement pins online so I suspect a similar setup
As someone who's not a regular subscriber, I'm blown away by the knowledge on display and explained here! Jeez, I feel so much smarter after watching this video. Great job, Rob!
On the physics front, you're correct. Between engineering and physics, a certain size brake is necessary to stop a certain amount of weight, but if you want it reliable and safe, it needs to be xx dimension and materials. Combining the two with speed makes things a bit more interesting, to which you also enter the contact patch of your tire. More often than not, increasing your tire or moving to a sticker compound will make your brake system more effective. Reducing overall weight makes Everything better.
11:03 That's not how hydraulic brakes work, but you did excellent explaining energy and thermal mass!
What you mean? Yes he got pressure a little bit wrong when talking about break fluid. Breakfliud will experience pressure just like air. It just wont compress like air or so.
Best RUclipsr Ever!
Reasons I completely replaced the brake system on my 1988 Mustang. I'll lead off with what I went to. 1995 brakes, completely.
1- gained rear disc brakes.
2- larger rotors for better thermal mass (like you stated) so they can handle higher speed stopping and repeated stopping for a longer time.
3- better design. The 1988 front rotors have the wheel bearings built into the rotor. Meaning to swap the rotor you have to pull everything apart. The later 1994 and up have the modern rotors that are separate from the hubs and wheel bearings (less chance of cooking the bearings too). The other design change which I've never seen anyone else do this (not saying it hasn't been done back then by someone else) is the calipers only need a single bolt removed to rotate the caliper up and away from the rotor to swap pads. Far easier than any other vehicle I've worked on including the rear brake caliper on my 1994 Honda VFR which is nearly identical except it's 2 bolts of the 3 that need removed to do the exact same thing.
The downside, I needed to gut my proportioning valve and remove it's guts before re-installing. Then install a separate valve on the rear brake line between the prop valve and the split at the rear axle. (It's on the firewall). I also had to replace the master cylinder to a 1993 Cobra part (not a big deal since you can get them new like I did). And the minor downside, I can only run 5 lug wheels now because I literally swapped everything including the spindles and the complete rear axle from a 95.
Note: Only people who know these cars will see something wrong with my car because I grabbed a set of new edge v6 wheels which are Tri Bar wheels and they have the mustang symbol on the center caps. If they realize what they are looking at they should know it's 5-lug wheels and the fox platform only had 4-lug wheels except for the 93 Cobra and Cobra R. Another interesting fact, the race only 93 Cobra R had factory Tri Bar wheels like the wheels I have right now, except they were painted all black with a machined lip. Same exact dimensions and offset.
The stainless steel braid is a thin outer layer that is designed to flex in all directions and cannot prevent the hose from expanding, its main function is to protect the teflon inner hose against abrasion with a secondary function of looking good;)
This is a great video, if your brakes can lock up your tires then the limiting factor in slowing down is your tires. The bigger the size of the brakes doesn’t help so much with slowing down quicker, it instead helps with slowing down in the same or similar distance the next 10 or 20 times you hit them hard right after your first stop. Big brakes help by keeping your brakes from overheating and getting horrible brake fade. Carbon Ceramic brakes help by being able to handle heat much better then traditional metal rotors
Just a bit of info from the guy who made all these calipers at PBR in Melbourne Australia, The 6pot Z06 calipers used the same dia. pistons / bores. This allowed for easier manufacturing (machined in 2 setups on a 5 axis Chiron machining center) also the used of six individual pads eliminates tapered pad wear.
Correct in how the OEM makes changes throughout the life cycle of the chassis, even with my truck, the 97-02 had single piston fronts and drum rears but for 2003 and 2004 the last two years of that same generation (97-04) they went to 2 piston front calipers and rear wheel disc, additional to the rear ABS; all Bosch, the vender Dodge had during that era. Now they run Brembo for the SRT lineup. Before that was the swap to do, now with Brembo, and other aftermarket kits, you don't have to dive through pick-aparts for "OEM plus" Youre also limited to what you have, hub/wheel stud spacing, unless you swap to a different pattern.
absolutely outstanding video Rob, thank you for clearing up questions I hadn't even thought of yet!!
I learnt way more than I signed up for...
.
.
Absolutely love it. ❤
different brake fluid brands have different compressibility specs. the difference is noticeable. i used castrol SRF for a long time because of the high wet boiling point. but then switched to Torque RT700 and notice a big difference in pedal feel.
Ive bee upgrading to brakes stainless braided lines for a long time, its really the only way to upgrade your brakes as such. All it really does, it give you more break force with better control to the wheel. This extra control and more direct force application does result in a shorter and better braking performance. Usually that is adequate to upgrade brake performance on stock brakes quite a bit. Helps a lot with old Hiluxes, from hard braking to full lock up capability.. especially when towing..
Take a shot every time Rob says "Ratio"!
Such a great video on a popular upgrade, very interesting stuff and I love how contagious your excitement and enthusiasm are!
Rob Dahm just made me consider buying 6 piston brembos for my stock 1989 nissan micra (basically a small first gen VW golf) with 55 hp stock engine….
I think we should appreciate that Rob is here teaching us instead of trying to sell us stuff 😂 i would buy 8 cars, 6 rotations around the earth worth of tefzel (or however you write it) wire, 19 haltech units along with about 6 mill worth of cool sh*t if he just explained why its good to me 😂
It's important to understand nothing is gained for free. Every improvement is always offset to an extent.
A larger brake kit with a larger wheel and tyre is also (usually) an increase in unsprung weight that needs to be controlled and an increase in rotational inertia that needs to be stopped which will increase heat.
Everything is part of system.
When it comes to brakes the limiting factor is always the tyres relationship to the surface. ABS is completely governed by that.
Great points. The things you mentioned are the same things I'm grappling with while considering how to improve brake performance on my 2004 VW GTI 2.8L VR6. I feel a bigger brake kit is warranted. I'm frustrated with OEM rotors warping sooner than reasonable under normal use on roads and highways. The car is not tracked. Lately I considered upgrading to Brembo calipers, pads, braided lines, and rotors. However, the car only has 17" wheels from the factory and may need bigger wheels to fit the brake kit, and to adequately pair the kit with larger tires for proper stopping capability. The biggest I want to go is 18". Anything bigger would look absurd and excessively detract from MPG and general handling. If I can get the benefit from bigger Brembo rotors and calipers while continuing to use 17" wheels this would be ideal. Effects of this on safety and handling also need to be considered. I will discuss this with a Brembo factory representative once they return my message. As you indicated, there's give and take with every change. I'm looking for a good balance of all attributes with no sacrifice to safety.
Just noticed this video shows the car with the single exhaust exit. It’s always weird to think the order in which channels upload content isn’t necessarily the chronological order of filming
It's weird to think how small details people can spot. 😀
The Man Rob !!!! What a team you have ! Solid content
The breakdown of the break lines!.... Phenomenal.💯💯
I love how you explain the engineering behind things thats one of the reasons why i love your videos
11:15 This is the second thing that gives you a good response: a single brake-pad for every piston. 18:24 The good ol' reliable optical system. I've learned on a system like this (in Germany you are a trainee for 3,5 years to become a "Geselle" [journeyman]). I think you learn more about chassis/steering geometry than with a computerized one.
Man what a detail explanation of every brake component. After your video I feel like I can do a BBK change for any car. You got my subscribed man. A very great video. Very honest telling. Great camera work. God blessed you.
I've bought most of the parts for My cars from eBay Motors or Rock Auto. The Most recent part's I purchased from eBay Motors were some R1 Concepts Cross Drilled and Slotted rotors and Ceramic pads. Which work Perfectly and I didn't have to spend an arm and leg to smoother and better braking.
Thank you for making this video so I don’t have to go into this with other car guys who absolutely think they’re right as they’re trying to explain why their $10,000 brake kit makes their car faster. Got 18k springs in the rear of my fortune auto coils in my sti perfect setup, no longer bouncy and launches super flat because 12k springs weren’t good enough for 600hp awd.
My dad upgraded the brakes on our 2015 F-150 Lariat, and I'll say, it's way nicer being able to lightly press the pedal and stop like it's nothing. Drilled and slotted rotors with some high performance pads, works really well for around town and highway use
You can go too big on breaks if you never get them hot enough. You'd be surprised how well good pads can do wonders over going to larger calipers and rotors for most applications. To save weight, two piece rotors go a very long way, but again, in most applications it's uncessary. I like the idea of seeing what OEM options are available. For example, 30MM on a 300ZX vs the 25MM
Rob I Do wheel alignments at work most days . it's no point setting up spring rates or ride height without weight in the car. we set cars up with 75kg in each seat to mimick 2 people in the car or a family car 40kg in the back each side ..please think about it
Your rotor is a lever, you make them larger and they apply more leverage and thus it will apply more torque and lock up the wheel easier but that does not equate to braking distance shortening. Mostly larger rotors are just used for the thermal advantage like you say.
given a set applied foot pressure, the braking leverage will decrease stopping distance. To make a smaller rotor brake as well, you would need to kick the pedal harder. In any case the reality is that bigger rotors equal shorter distances on the same vehicle in testing.
@@jamesmedina2062until you lock the tire. Then it does nothing. But you can adjust any brakes to apply more brake for a given amount of pedal pressure.
@@SlyNine Correct. Thats why I said what I did. In other words control is important. Or in other words, increasing pressure but not locking is going to improve braking. With a larger rotor it is not just heat dissipation but you have a larger swept area for clamping with your pads and control is easier. Control is a big deal.
This video from was great!
You should put in a damper adjustment extender onto those rear shocks. its basically a flexible shaft that extends the knob to where it's accessible.
21:41 what you should do is attach a sock it to it so you can draw a hole directly above it and you can slide down a speed wrench and adjust it from the top side. Like they do in NASCAR
I remember seeing that yellow Diablo around town when i lived in SE Mi. Super cool to see it made the move to Socal. I live out near Ventura now. Both of us got sick of that Michigan cold.
I’ve got to C5 big brake kit from Baer on my blown fox body and those twin piston brakes work phenomenally I run 13 inch drilled slotted rotors and I road race and they do not let me down ever
having to go to a larger wheel will also change the ride height and speedo readings so a change to a lower profile tyre would be needed to correct that or a speedo correction box and lowered ride height on the suspencion
You should get some of those coilover knob extensions so that you can adjust your coilover without pulling carpet out of the way. I know they make some for Öhlins and MeisterR stuff, so it shouldn’t be hard to find something compatible with FortuneAuto coilovers
On my 2003 BMW E46 M3 - I upgraded the front brakes from OE single piston to i 335 BMW 6 piston brembos and bigger rotors and I did not notice any difference in stopping but I am betting that's only something you would notice on a track after putting a lot of heat into the brake system not on a weekend cruiser .
Very educational and a great tribute to car community Rob, honestly pulling clutch for the newbies to learn about what is basic concepts to us
Once the brakes are large/strong enough to lock up the tires (or reach the ABS threshold), even on warm, dry, clean, smooth pavement with the stickiest tires you might use on the car...then the only benefit of going larger is heat management so that they will keep doing it repeatedly without degrading. Now there can be other benefits to making changes to your brake system (pedal feel, pedal travel, pad friction levels at various pressures and temperatures, other heat management techniques such as better fluid, front/rear bias balance, etc., but those things are dependent upon a lot of other design factors besides just "bigger."
Totally agree,
like you said pad friction levels, even the brake lines mentioned in the video and brake bias tuning you can achieve most of the benefits of a big brake kit without deviating from stock other than the heat soak ability of the extra mass.
now, the biggest place where you need bigger brakes is when you increase the wheel size, stock brakes and even with different level pads it still might be scary to stop on lifted trucks and cars running much larger wheels than stock or if you're racing the car in some autocross or doing 1mile speed runs and you need the extra thermal mass.
@@matthewmenteer5673 AND...extra mass is not the only way to absorb more heat energy without exceeding some maximum critical temperature. And alternate path is to figure out how to get the existing mass to SHED that heat energy faster so that it doesn't build up to that maximum critical temperature.
Now, whether or not you can figure out how to do that - with more cooling air flow, more vanes/fins or other method of increasing surface area, perhaps actively cooling the brake fluid somehow, etc. - well enough to do the job, I don't know. But it IS a valid path to think about.
And consider whether you can engineer a disk strong enough, with a larger diameter, but the same or less mass as the disk you are replacing. For example you could sacrifice expected disk life by using a thinner friction surface, but possibly gain additional lever arm and surface area in the trade-off.
I'm certain the big name performance brake manufacturers have engineers that already know all this stuff, but of course they also have to consider expected life span, complexity, manufacturability, cost, etc. They aren't actually seeking maximum performance at the expense of everything else. At least not for their aftermarket big brake kits that target street/track enthusiasts with production cars. The requirements are a little different when F1 engineers design things of course.
Hmmmm...I wonder...if we're just dreaming...could you design a brake system that works like a multi-plate wet clutch, and actively cool the fluid? Could you utilize the fluid for activation as well, to eliminate a second pressure system? Could it be made compact enough not to add any unsprung and rotating mass relative to a traditional disk/caliper design? Has somebody else already thought of this?
@@xtnuser5338
you can turn the kinetic energy into 3 things when you're trying to slow down, heat or damage or into potential energy... you could shave off rotors like a lathe with the friction materials hoping the chips would take most of the heat. For the heat, there is only a few options bigger more mass, or more tolerant components like ceramic disc's, fluid braking wouldn't work because it would surely boil and cavitate, even brake torquing a TC you can cause damage in under 10seconds. a wet clutch system won't slip for light braking applications its stacks of rings and friction material meant to multiply the clamping force, it's not meant to slip as the friction would be so concentrated in such a small package.
drilled and slotted rotors only mildly help with fade from gassing pads, even forced air to the rotors won't help much as its just simply not enough. exotic materials are really the way to gain extra heat performance of the typical brakes
the best solution would be conventional brakes with a KERS type system like aggressive regenerative braking.
frankly I'm of the mind that every car should have some sort of regenerative braking, just a system big enough to capture energy from Max GCVW going 90mph to 0.
hybrids almost never need brakes replaced due to wear,
on your idea of cooling the brakes.... water jet would be the easiest way and cheapest and least exotic way.
China does this on some of their trucks, I don't know their limits but they are definitely designed different. some have like 6 dully axels on maybe a 40ft box truck.
point is the caliper style brakes are generally found to be the best as far as this application goes. if you combine that with improvements to materials, and with supplemental systems like a KERS or regenerative braking you can get more performance for less of an issue.
@@matthewmenteer5673 It's a lot of fun talking to you!
1. Cutting the rotors in a very controlled manner could be made to work wonderfully! And I'm excited that you even though of it. But of course it wouldn't work for very long. I guess technically that's what we're doing with brake pads now, just not fast enough to remove significant amounts of heat.
2. Air cooling isn't adequate, only because the system isn't optimized for it. One difficulty is of course that during brake usage, they're getting hotter while the airflow is reducing. I mean we're able to keep piston engine heads, and even jet engine internals, cool enough with air alone. We certainly COULD build systems that would keep themselves adequately cooled with air. I suspect the additional equipment required to do it would need another truck to follow you around while you drive though.
3. Wet clutch systems can be smoothly transitioned from full slip to no slip, requiring only proper modulation of a clutch. I think the only real problems with this idea are that: A. It's more complex already, and cooling the fluid would add even more complexity. B. To handle the intense torque of stopping a 3000-lb car from 100-mph in five or six seconds would require quite a pretty heavy duty unit...one that is probably bigger and heavier than a traditional rotor/caliper setup.
What do you think about designing the caliper/pad/rotor interface to actually pull heat INTO the caliper, then just running the brake lines (including the caliper fluid volume too) in a closed loop system with a tiny circulating pump and a heat sink of some sort? I think this is a good idea in principle - not super complex, not a lot of extra weight - but I don't know how much heat energy transfer you could actually get from the rotor to the caliper in whatever small unit of time you targeted. Not enough to solve brake problems forever, but it certainly could at least add a very small percentage of improvement to rotor cooling, and definitely could prevent fluid boil.
When Isaiah talked about brake fluid being corrosive, it reminded me of the time my uncle used it to wash his hands before eating a hot dog.
Thank you for giving a Dahm, Rob. We appreciate it.
In rotation, its called a moment arm. Its the same concept as leverage but applied to a radial motion. The bigger the moment arm, the more torque generated at the axis.
The c4 corvette generation folks that uses C5 brakes as upgrade have been know to lock the front brakes, unless you get the c6 set up and use the 340mm rotors front and rear then its just a big brake upgrade but you just don't shoot flames from your rotors as easily
One caliper piston equally opposes the force of the piston on the other side of the caliper. Like pinching a bathroom scale between thumb and forefinger. (reach assumed) The scale reads the force that your thumb exerts toward your forefinger. If the scale reads 5lbs....then you have 5lbs of force exerted by your thumb which can only exist if there is 5lbs resisting that force, which is provided by your forefinger. The total force does not double to become 10 lbs of force. I hope that makes sense. Also, my bathroom scale uses the floor (and the scale's spring) to provide a force to oppose my body weight, otherwise, my 180lbs acting on the scale would read as 360lbs if you added the "acting" force and "opposing" force together.
Another thing about the calipers having pistons each side is equal pad pressure on both side instantly and no chance of disc warping since the single side piston has to rely on the pressure of the 1st piston before it can pull the other side onto the disc from the housing moving.
what are you saying? Warped rotors come from linearity of hub circle to the rotor circle and deviation will cause warping. Also certain rotors are thinner and will warp due to worse heat dissipation. Even the bracketry holding the calipers can contribute to uneven pressures from the pads. How many pistons push the pads is of minimal importance.
I have swapped 2 piston calipers for 6 piston calipers front, and swapped 1 piston calipers for 4 piston rear.
I have absolutely no regrets.
Nobody I know ever said that their brakes are too big.
Another great video rob and like you I am always hungry for data................experience tells me you should run 0 degrees toe in on the front and rear. Negative toe in will make the wheels return to straight and positive to will allow the wheels to wander. Most street cars run a small amount of toe in. Caster changes the way the car steers ( imagine the angle of the neck on a pushbike ) and brakes as well as changing the camber angle and toe as the suspension moves up and down.
Rob boutta turn this into a science channel and I love it!
Hey, Rob! Don't know if you know about this or not, but a quick trick for ride comfort when it comes to the car pitching back and forth (which is the movement humans most dislike when it comes to comfort in cars) the cheapest/simplest way to handle it is to have the front suspension frequency be about 3/4 the rear frequency. A real nice round example of that would be a 2hz frequency rear with a 1.5hz front.
Just something to think about since you mention the car's comfort as a street car! :D
EDIT: Love this video in general, too!
I've learned so much from Dahm and these comments section.
Teacher Dahm in thr house. Really amazing informative video. Love it as always
on the rear shock adjuster..a tight fitting tube over the knob, sticking up through the hole for easier adjustment.
When I worked at PBR Australia I machined both types of calipers you are showing
big brake kit on an 18” I think is the sweet spot, fitting larger rotors that require larger wheels (I mean on a proper weight sports car like 1500kg max) only makes the wheels heavier, more unsprung weight, more money, worse ride, worse grip (although more precise). If they overheat then you can add cooling ducts. That’s for performance. if you want looks and don’t want to mess with ducting then ok. In fact I prefer the stock 17” but it’s harder to find tires and fit high performance brakes.
Love watching these technical videos.
He looks so happy at 7:57 , like all of us when we finally get a nice upgrade to our ride esp when we got a good deal. HEHE, I especially liked the metal sheet and pinky with leverage example u gave. in one min you cover what other youtubers tried with a 15-20mins video LOL
Nice I went from c4 to c6 and cts -v calipers I had to do some work but looks great.
Don't forget the correct selection of brake pad is at least as important - co-efficient of friction and the intended operating heat range are useful tuning aids.
One lesson I learn often when tinkering is that the auto manufacturers are actually not stupid or idiots nor have they missed a big opportunity. They made the best compromise all around for the intended use. If you want to change the intended use for your car, you have to rebalance all of those variables (often with only one install to get it right). Summary: I usually just leave shit alone, it's also cheaper :)
NEED HELP: Any upgraded Pads, Steel Braided Lines, & Rotors suggestions?! (BMW 230i, Bolt Ons, Stage 2 Tune, avg +315hp)
To be honest I don't care for a big brake set up for my daily. I am on the route to get upgraded performance rotors & pads for curvy mountain spirited driving with my crew on the weekends and every now and then hard straight line acceleration when I am bored. Maybe I would track it 1-2 a year.
Fortune Auto has come a REALLY long way. I remember when they were effectively a garage operation supplying local drifters in VA Beach. Glad @FortuneAuto has increased their quality of product over the years.
14:46 imagine you get more front bias with the new brakes on while the stock brakes were already having too much force bias on the front. Stock brakes on cars have much more front bias than you would want for fast cornering but that’s for safety. Advanced drivers don’t mind that because they know how to tune the car for their needs.
Had the same brakes on the front of my e46. calipers on those are super chonky, and the offsett on the disk is very low so the caliper comes far out into the wheel, so they are terrible for wheel fitment. Friend of mine runs 10mm larger rotors (e92 m3) with alfa guila quadrofolgio brembo calipers, and has better wheel clearance.
Also, rob, you don't have to have the caliper off the car to do the pads, the slider pins are the bolts you see on the outside the caliper, undo those and slite the pad out.
Are those directional rotors? It bugs me when they put two left rotors on cars because the vanes are backwards on one side. Audi does that and it pisses me off.
Totally not expecting the Robert Frost reference. I grew up with that poem. 👍 Rob
Comment about the setup - remember to check the ackerman angle. It's important to play with it to get the best grip from the inside tyre. This is essential when changing tires because a wider or stickier tire has a different slip angle so it will need a different ackerman setting.
Also, more negative camber is great in corners but reduces braking in a straight line
bigger isn't always better, if you're talking about a street car. how often do you actually need 100% brake force on the street. usually only during panic or emergency braking. stock brakes with street pads are generally enough to lock up the tires or engage ABS. now it's a different story if you take the same car to the track where you'll use 100% brake force multiple times per lap for 15-30 minutes at a time. you'll get brake fade within a few laps. this is where larger brakes comes into play. but the cheapest way to improve brakes on a track car is pad compound. majority of club race cars use stock brakes setup with upgrade pads, fluid and lines.
Upgraded my Audi front brakes from single piston to 4 piston. Same disc size. Worked wonders
how did it change it?? Much harder braking? All else equal?
@@jamesmedina2062 it's much less touchy, I love it. You can modulate it much better now than stock
@@J3n555 ok i know what you mean. As I told someone else there can be many benefits coming from the rigidity of a good system and fixed calipers with only moving pistons. I had pretty good luck with brakes on B5 and B3 and 4 Passats using Pagid brake pads. But a BBK should give you more reserve braking potential which is good for mountain driving or racing track use.
Thanks for the information, that was great and I learned more about cambering tires and why or why not to. Love all the information.
I love automotive science classes with Rob