dudesqueak

Does anyone have any actual brake test results after installing his or her big brake kit (C5, CTS-V, 5th Gen Camaro, Z06, Baer, Wilwood, etc) on a 4th Gen compared to factory brake setup? Let's see them!

By now there have been plenty of people who have upgraded their 4th Gens and I think we should have a real braking test! Of course, there are plenty of factors that will play into this. If a braking test could be established that includes 4th gens with similar or common upgrades to parts other than the brake calipers and rotor sizes themselves, the results could be very accurate.
Here's what I am thinking:

Roughly 9 or so 4th Gen Camaros/Firebirds with identical/similar:
Tires - size, treadwear rating (how sticky the tires are)
Wheels - does wheel weight matter?
Suspension - shocks, springs, anything else important for braking?
Weight - hopefully cars can be within 20 lbs of each other
BRAKE PADS! - it is most important that these cars have the same brake pads installed!!!
Rotors - hopefully we could get some cars with similar rotor compositions and heat treatment for this test.
Bedding - brakes bedded in properly

Let's be realistic - owners who would be willing to participate in this test will be all over the country. In order for the results to be accurate, the driving conditions must be the same:
Weather - 70 degrees? 80? No precipitation
Surface - asphalt or concrete? Are there cracks in the pavement?
Grade - level ground is most desired, but how do we guarantee that the ground is exactly the same?

The cool thing is that these cars (for the most part) do not have to have the same engine, drivetrain, exhaust, or cosmetic upgrades. But that does raise some questions:
Motor - will different motors have different amounts of friction and other factors that slow down the cars?
Drivetrain - same question as above
Convertible vs T-top vs hard top - does the rigidity of the body severely affect straight line braking?

Comparisons that I would like to see:
OEM 4th Gen calipers and rotor size
C5 conversion
C6 Z51 conversion
C6 Z06 conversion
1st gen CTS-V calipers with Z06 rotors
1st gen CTS-V calipers with 5th gen Camaro rotors
2nd gen CTS-V calipers with Z06 rotors
2nd gen CTS-V calipers with 5th gen Camaro rotors
5th gen Camaro brembos and rotors
Baer, Wilwood, and other brake kit installed cars are welcome and encouraged to participate as well.

After writing all this, I realize that it would probably be easiest to have one car change brakes 9 or so times and test under the same conditions in the same location. Sam Strano? BMR? 6LE? WS6 store? UMI? Come on, someone's gotta be willing to do this and have the parts laying around or easily accessible! It's not like you couldn't sell the parts after minimal use anyway.

In this test, how nice the brakes look and how expensive they are will be disregarded. Prices of parts are different for everybody depending on where/how parts are obtained, so this test will not be inclusive of prices. There are other threads for looks and pricing. The purpose of this test is to find the true PERFORMANCE advantage of upgrading the brakes on a 4th Gen. Rotor and pad composition will (hopefully) be the same. This is purely about rotor size and caliper construction.

Until we can get this experiment to actually occur somewhere, feel free to post your personal straight line braking test results with what car setup/weight you have on your 4th Gen. Are there any flaws in my thought process here? Am I missing anything that should be a constant in the experiment? Also feel free to post ideas for where/when this test can occur. LSFest? Thanks for reading!

01ssreda4

iTrader: (96)

I will do my strange drag brakes, but my car is lighter then most.

00PewterSS

iTrader: (3)

Not to rain on your parade, but what you are proposing isn't practical or possible. With a completely controlled experiment the variation run-run would be significant. Most people looking for brake upgrades aren't looking for one time stopping performance, the benefit is fade resistance, brake feel, appearance, etc. Excellent one time stopping performance can be achieved with a brake pad change alone. Aggressive brake pads will overpower street tires.

I can tell you with my 4 piston brembos and Carbotech pads I'm at the limit of the tires, not the brakes.

Brian

landstuhltaylor

iTrader: (6)

Yep, this would be useless. The only way you could get anything meaningful is if you had all the cars there at the same time on the same day in the same location.

Pretty certain I could take my car onto Toledo airport with stock brakes and put up the best numbers.

thunderstruck507

iTrader: (18)

The stock brakes are actually pretty good IMO as far as stopping. I would expect the majority of the benefits of the upgrades are in how well they handle heat without fade.

dudesqueak

So I should change the scope of the experiment to resistance to fading instead of straight line stopping? Or should I just add that to the test? And you're also saying that this could only benefit from a car that has really sticky tires on it because even the stock brakes can lock up the wheels?

Chris Paveglio

iTrader: (2)

Instead of thinking of "what to add or change" in the experiment, what do YOU want to know? Are you doing this to be an end-all for all brake conversations? What's your reason for even considering this?

There are so many different use cases- AX, road racing, drag, street, a mix of all of them. A stock caliper with good pad could out-stop a BBK with poor street pad. And it simply MUST be done at the same location. Tire compound and asphalt/concrete composition will massively affect the outcomes, as will tire type.

Like 00PewterSS said, it's extremely challenging, if not practically impossible. What's "the best brakes" for autocross could be a lot different than "best for road race". Even if you narrow the scope to be only "best fade resistance for road racing", you need to say which track, and have nearly identical cars driven as identically as possible, with the exact same brake pads, driven by the same driver maybe, who can tell how soon car X starts to have fade. It's a tall order to set up such a test. Not that it can't be done, but requires a lot of effort to remove all variables except your test topic (calipers + discs), and pay for track time, get owners with identical cars there, test gear, etc.

landstuhltaylor

iTrader: (6)

Yep. Last year I ran regularly at three concrete sites and they all had different characteristics.

And a one and done stopping test is only going to be testing the tires and suspension. I have never experienced brake fade at an autocross with stock LS1 front and LT1 rear rotors/calipers. DTC-30s will lock up a 315 Hoosier all day long and the rear will hop long before you fade a generic parts store pad. The real benefits are from repeated high speed stops and improved feel.

LLLosingit

iTrader: (4)

Very true and then you have brake combinations that don't work as well stockers until you get some serious heat into them.
You also have to factor in weight, I'm swapping stock S10 brakes for Brembo calipers and z06 rotors and can't believe how heavy they are compared to the stock calipers and rotors, Add in the fact that I will be using hubs made from old S10 rotors and I wouldn't be surprised if I just added 30-40lbs of rolling weight to the front of my truck...But they look killer

JD_AMG

The absolute best case scenario you can have for results is if someone took their car with a stock brake setup and did a test(whatever that test may be), and then immediately changed to another brake setup and did the same exact test the same day without anything else changing. Otherwise there are a ton of factors involved that can really change results.

dudesqueak

I am looking into a brake conversion. I'm trying to see if it's even worth it. I have a spring-summer-fall daily driver. I am putting Koni DAs and BMR springs on it, so the next step is the brakes for me. The treadwear rating on the tires is 340. I know that is not a sticky tire, but I am looking to get longetivity out of them. Eventually I would like to have a spare set of wheels with some really sticky tires on them that I put on the car for weekends at the track (of any kind). After doing some research, I have seen that the cost of 1st gen CTS-V calipers are roughly the same cost of C5 conversion brackets from 6LE. Plus, the CTS-V calipers look and work better and the rotors are bigger. Then I thought, "I've locked up my wheels trying to stop from high speeds with my stock brakes." So the issue there is probably the tires. But assuming I could even afford a second set of track wheels, would it even be necessary to get bigger and better brakes if I already know that the stock brakes can stop the wheels very well? Or will the possible benefits of less brake wear over time on a bigger brake kit outweigh the costs of upgrading? Does that answer your question as to what I'm looking for in brake performance?

LLLosingit

iTrader: (4)

It depends on what you plan on using the car for, If it's just daily driving then stock brakes will work just fine. If you plan on running it on a road course or do lots of hard stops with little chance for the brakes to cool down in between then bigger brakes are going to be better.
Bigger brakes have more surface area so they heat up slower and dissipate heat better. Pad wear would depend on brake pad material but in theory bigger brake pads would last longer if both used the same material.
Some people do it just for looks, I put 18" and 19" wheels on my S10 and the stock brakes look really small so that's one reason for me to upgrade. Another reason is the fact that the original engine made 180hp at the flywheel and the new setup should make well over 500hp at the wheels so it's much faster and heavier than stock.
I also have stiffer springs/ bigger sway bars/ better shocks to make it handle better so a brake upgrade was needed should I ever decide to see what it's capable of doing on the track. Did I say the look killer too!

justin455

It's need vs want.

As far as what you need goes;

Street driven? Stock.
Auto-X? Stock is generally fine.
Actual track driving? Depends on the track, but stock could last as short as a couple laps before you get dangerous amounts of fade. BBK is a great idea, but on a small track you could probably get away with DOT4/5 fluid and some track pads.

Adding a BBK to anything but a car that sees track use is a want, not a need, and should be looked at as an aesthetic modification. And there's nothing wrong with that. If you want a BBK, go for it. You just have to accept that this mod is done for looks and your car probably won't stop any better day to day than it did with stock brakes. If you get track pads, it's probably stopping worse than with stock brakes. That doesn't take into account the added unsprung weight of larger calipers and rotors.

As far as which setup is the best for these cars, most likely we'll never had definitive evidence to say one way or the other. However, the 4 piston CTS-V mod is probably the best bang for your buck along with being one of the easiest installs and it uses common parts that don't require much modification so when things wear out, you're not out a ton of money or hassle to replace them. All that on top of being a great performer.

eb110americana

iTrader: (4)

This might just be rationalization (I would also like to see it tested) but a larger rotor should allow for better ABS modulation. When under full ABS lockup, the car has to quickly balance the braking force to approach lockup, but never surpass it. As mentioned earlier, our system is relatively slow, so it does not adjust as many times per second, which means it doesn't get as close to lockup as a newer car would. Just like it is easier to be smooth with a large bus steering wheel than a go-cart-small one, the larger rotor should allow the system to get a bit closer to threshold at each pulse. The greater number of pistons should also allow a more even contact patch, preventing premature lockup as just one corner of the brake pad snags the rotor unexpectedly. These characteristics probably would not be noticeable anywhere, except under extreme ABS, or near-ABS braking.

pdxmotorhead

The largest groups of road race cars in SCCA are not allowed to use a full BBK and they do fine on road race courses.. Good Pads will get you a long long ways.. Carbotech Panther Plus will take a lot.

dudesqueak

I plan on daily driving, occasionally hitting up the drag strip, road course, and auto cross course. But since a set of sticky tires isn't in the near future, I think I will just save the money I would spend on converting the brakes for now and upgrade the rest of the suspension first. Sucks that we can't get a definite answer on the performance aspect of this question, but you guys were still very helpful!

01ssreda4

iTrader: (96)

Magazine and TV have been doing basic brake tests forever and I never hear anyone screaming how invalid they are?

JD_AMG

Those comparison tests between cars within a comparison article are all done on the same day, time, and same track/road and done numerous times to get an average. Same goes for when comparing cars from two different articles, the tests are usually done on some kind of track, or at least on the same road in the same conditions.
What he is talking about here is you cannot get a real valid apples to apples comparison unless you get a car with stock brakes to do a test, then that same car get whatever brake upgrade, and then its tested again that same day, same spot without any other changes.
What joe schmoe's braking distance is with a full weight car on cheap all season tires and worn out stock brakes being compared to a guy with aggressive pads, sticky tires, lower weight and a taut suspension is far from apples to apples and doesn't actually show the difference the brakes alone made.