dagamore

is there any reason why it would be bad to put bigger brakes in the rear, not monster big, but bigger such as say the stock front size, or something like that?

or does anyone know of a better looking rear brake that will work for both street and strip use.

Also keep in mind that i drive on the Autobhan and often have to brake very hard. Looking to have better brakes, and am going to do a break upgrade in the front and will replace the rubber lines with steel lines up front, do you have to do the same in the rear?

Legion5

I've worked fairly closely with a mustang brake manufacturer and I was trying to do just that for looks not performance at one point. It's very complicated to get it to work.

The short story is that during braking the front brakes do 85% of the work and the rear do 15%.

so the rear needs to be valved to provide about 3.5 times less force than the front. If you take the front brakes and put them on the rear then the rear provides 50% and the front 50%. In those conditions your car will spin and you will be wrapped around a tree.

With that being said I've tested every sub $3000 brake upgrade available for the mustang most of them on the same day and back to back (I got the parts from 2 companies at a huge discount). If you want some recommendations on how to actually make your car stop better from high speed shoot me a PM. I don't get on this forum often in the past few months because I'm working like crazy but you autobahn drivers deserve some accurate help.

I also still do get some lesser discounts for brakes if you want me to pass them along.

jahudso2

im not sure about the visual aspect, but pads, fluid, and new lines might give you all the braking power you need. upgrading to bigger rotors wont make you stop any quicker if you can lock up the tires with stock brakes. I have hawk hps pads on my car which were ~150 for all 4 corners and the brakes bite much better with them.

GA05GT

With the front setup to the rear like Legion stated your braking will be affected.

Not only that your ABS would be outa wack, due to a different proportioning valve. The larger caliper will require more fluid going to the rear of the car to actually be able to move the caliper...

If you just want to run a larger rotor in the rear Steeda offers a larger rotor w/ relocation bracket for the factory caliper. This will not change the balance in braking, due to the same pressure being exerted to the rotor.

Good luck.

pascal

Not bad, but pretty freaking dumb.
It's like shooting someone in the chest after you decapitated him...

dagamore

ok i guess the main idea was bad, i just really hate the look of my brakes and i feel that they just glare at me with my new rims. I might just have to paint them, i wonder if any high temp pain with work, or if you need special brake caliper paint.

GA05GT

HAHAHA, to make sure they are dead? lol

jahudso2

Actually, using a larger rotor and relocating the caliper to further outside on the rotor would increase the rear braking bias. If the pressure is the same, then the force is the same that the pads apply. However, this force is further from the center of the axle which creates a greater braking torque on the tires. This creates more rear bias, however it will not be as severe as placing the front calipers in the rear.

Sleeper_08

There is paint available for calipers, for example

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0-QnXPLVe0

I have also heard people mention "caliper covers" and a Google search turned up

http://www.calipercover.net/

A agree that the stock rotors look funny in larger rims, like my 18s, and in my case especially funny as I'm running GT500 rotors and calipers at the front.

Norm Peterson

Mention of that 'autobahn' word makes the brake balance issue more important than anything else. PROPER brake balance is what gets you maximum stopping capability and avoids making the car directionally unstable. As Legion5 and others hint at, it's less difficult to identify things that affect balance than it is to re-engineer the system to keep it balanced (or perhaps re-balance it, if there's a sound reason for doing so, such as changing to significantly grippier tires). I'd keep the idea of installing an adjustable proportioning valve - and learning how to tweak it - in the back of my mind if I was going to mess with brake balance if for any reason the brake bias could move in the less forward/more rearward direction.

You absolutely want to keep your brake fluid fresh, and that it be something with high dry and wet boiling points. Minimum-spec DOT3 fluid isn't going to cut it, though some decent fluids should be readily available.

It should be possible to satisfy the dragstrip requirements simply by installing better pads. Drag racing isn't normally an environment where brake fade is an issue, so unless you're hot-lapping your runs (and your shutdown room is horribly short) most any fluid should be adequate as long as it's kept fresh.


Norm