I have upgraded my front calipers to a set of Baer 6 piston brakes. Simply amazing what they can do.

I have often considered upgrading my rears as well to perhaps a 4 piston setup or maybe at minimum a 2 piston setup. What is stopping me is that occasionally I enjoy going to the track and I have a set of slicks mounted on the stock LT1 16" salad shooter rims, and I know if I go with an aftermarket brake setup worthy of what I want in the rear that I will need to get aftermarket rear wheels for the track and get new slicks.

My question is, has anyone ever upgraded their rear calipers here? What do you have? How do they perform? And most inportantly, what track wheels are you running to make it happen?

I don't mind investing more $ in brakes to use on a regular basis for my street car. But for only taking my car to the track a half dozen times a year, I don't really want to drop the big $ needed to get huge wheels for the rear that will clear them and hold a good slick.

 

The 4th gens front/rear weight ratio is around 58/42 which obviously puts a lot more stress on the front brakes. Lots of auto crossers and canyon runners here will tell you that upgrading the rear brakes would be a BAD idea du to this. There's someone here who posted a vid of him and his Camaro running on a track with big brakes on the fronts and aggressive pads while the rear factory brakes have a less aggressive pad setup and you could hear the rear brakes chattering while braking hard, due to the factory front/rear weight transfer.
If you put a BBK on the rear brakes, chances are, you're gonna have your rear brakes really overpowering the rear end...unless you have a manual brake...shoot I forget what it's called but in essence you can manually adjust the brake ratio yourself so that you turn down the rear brakes more and make it more even. The only problem with that setup is that it also deletes the factory ABS which means you'll be skidding your tires a LOT until you figure out the right ratio for the brakes AND, you still will not have ABS any longer.
It's a hell of a sacrifice IMHO.
AND, you will be stopping much better simply by adding the BBK on the fronts, add a more aggressive pad onto the fronts, you get to keep the ABS, and there you go!

 

Why would upgrading your rear brakes "over power" your rear end? This makes zero sense to me.

If you read my post, then you would know I already have upgraded my front rotors, pads and calipers to a MUCH greater level than stock.

It would make the most sense if I upgraded the rears so the car would not put as much stress on the front brakes to do all the heavy lifting and upgrade the rears also.

Everything I'm doing or plan on doing will retain the factory ABS.

I called Baer the other day, and they have a 4 piston SS4 caliper that will clear the factory salad shooter wheels for when I go to the track and still greatly outperform the factory small one piston caliper that I currently have.

Most people here who spend the money on upgrading their brakes, just go the cheaper route with upgrading from LT1 calipers to LS1 calipers, or they go slightly less cheap and go with CTS-V calipers in the front. It seems I am in a vast minority that actually spend a bit more on a higher level of calipers up front. I realize going beyond that finding someone who actually upgrades the rears as well will be hard to find. However, I'm still waiting to see if anyone who actually has upgraded their rears can chime in and give their input on their setup.

 

I did read your post.
Others have done what you're thinking and it didn't work, it caused the rear brakes to lock, due to the rear being so much lighter, which causes the ABS to activate the fronts, you end up with a car that is unbalanced, hard braking will end up with your car slowing down longer than your current setup
Knock yourself out, go for it then.
Let me know how it works out for you

That's it, a proportioning valve where you can adjust the front rear braking ratio, which also negates the factory ABS. You'll be locking up your brakes when you slam on them, you'll have to learn to pulsate your brakes yourself...which can be done, you'll just have to practice a lot.

If you wanna do this for looks then great. Your car will look good with front/rear BBK.

If you want this for performance, brake better, then you're gonna mess up your brake balance by adding the BBK to the rears.

Do a search on adding a BBK to the rear of an f-body.
Good luck

 

Leave your rear calipers alone.

These cars like a heavy front brake bias setup. There is almost no weight over the rear wheels compared to the front under hard braking and thus absolutely no need to upgrade anything. Even some of the most hardcore HPDE setup cars run cheap Autozone pads with stock calipers in the rear.

 

X2 Brakes are very funky on an F-body, OEM or slightly better than OEM pads on the rear and more aggressive pads in the front are what most people run.

Not many have run a BBK in the rear, so since not a whole lot of people can comment on it, I think you should go for it. Try a 4 pot setup in the rear and who knows, maybe you'll end up liking it and it'll work better than stock. I have different opinions but you seem pretty confident that you want to try out a bigger rear caliper so whatever you want to try, I say go for it

 

Here's another idea and venue you can check, frrax.com, I haven't been there in a while , however these peeps race/autoX their f-bodies, they've done a whole shitload of mods and they know what works and what doesn't work.
frrax = f-body road racing autoX

 

Great site.

If you're even remotely interested in making these cars turn, they have some great info on there.

 

One of the biggest issues we have is axle tramp under braking which happens even more aggressively with shorter than stock torque arms. People have experienced this even with stock brakes w/ more aggressive pads.

The slow to respond/act ABS system our cars have just exacerbates the issue as it usually ends up being just a little behind and just makes it worse. I recall somebody testing this with and without the ABS fuse and the axle tramp went away with the ABS disabled.

 

What if the ABS was removed all together and replaced with an adjustable prop. Valve?

 

of course that'll work. if you're a great braker, you know WTF you're doing, and if you have the money for a throw away set of tires, and the time and space/road/track that you can use for high speed stops, and to do this adjusting on, then yes that will work.
Funny part about that is that chances are, you're gonna have that adjustment set at 80-20, so in essence you'll be barely using the rear brakes AND you just lost your ABS.

I'm just sayin.

 

I didn't realize ABS was that important. Thanks for the insight, and my respect to all the amatuer and professional drivers out there not using ABS.

 

I'm not sure that he is saying that ABS is that important. My gut feeling is that it isn't for the road race guys, I'd love to have them chime in on this. I think a lot of people rip the ABS system out for weight loss and simplicity's sake. Are you ripping it out if you're road racing because it is a shitty, too slow to react system? Too intrusive? I know that ABS CAN be a useful aid, but is 20 year old GM technology ABS a useful aid?

 

The thing is the factory ABS already does front/rear proportioning for you (98-02), IIRC it's dynamic. So removing it/disabling it really affects brake bias and therefore handling. I AX and I just recently tossed around the idea of removing ABS or going to a full manual (non-boosted) master cylinder, my final decision was to leave it the same and improve my driving style. Getting as good a brake balance F/R as stock with a manual setup or proportioning valve takes a lot of testing. I'd keep ABS. You just need to watch out/be aware of ice-mode.

 

The general consensus over many years and many guys/companies trying it is that the stock ABS/brake bias on these cars doesn't permit larger rear brakes, even if you get past the pad-spread problem.

I too wanted to ditch my rears for something easier to work with/more aesthetically pleasing (to match the CTS-V 4pot fronts) but the technical hurdles are immense and not cost effective. The rear braking on this car from the factory is absurdly strong, so you're better just gently upgrading the fronts and just paint/beautify the rears.

This is of course assuming you're looking for performance over appearance.

 

BTW, I tried to register there recently and it's not accepting new members sadly

 

Carlos is right.

Have you ever watched a motorcycle stop on the front wheel with the back wheel in the air? I think we've all seen that. Having more aggressive brakes on the front can and will transfer more weight forward during a hard stop. At that point, there is less weight on the rear tires to generate grip. Adding more aggressive brakes to the rear of these cars will tend to lock the rear brakes and promote "brake hop" (it's a violent event like "wheel hop" or "tire shake" on a fast drag car...but it happens during braking).

You simply don't have the rear grip to generate significant braking force with the rear and, not at a level that would actually take advantage of the upgraded rear brakes.

Email the admin at:

trackbird (at) gmail dot com

 

Will do, and I'll cite my username here so you know who's bugging you