I've been fortunate enough to have a LOT of track time available when I'm instructing and I've gotten a lot more so far this year than I thought I would, with more still to go. I've not experienced abnormal wear on my rotors, in fact I've only recently in February installed my first set of new front rotors since installing the cooling kit last year with 10+ track days on the car. The stock calipers are definitely not designed for the kind of heat I put them through on track. Even with titanium shims my dust boots can't take the heat and have begun to split around the pistons. Race pads with an 800*C MOT are getting so much heat into them they are glazing, crumbling away and wearing too quickly for my taste. I considered getting Winmax W7 or a slightly higher MOT race pad but they are still well over $200 a set in front and have a relatively thin friction puck in OEM sizing.
With my driving experience increasing I'm getting faster in the car, and with new coilovers going on soon my entry speeds will go up that much more and so will my braking demands. I have been progressively less confident with my OEM front brakes every time I track my car despite all the provisions I've made to them. Could I buy more expensive rotors and pads and try those out? Sure. But they wont add any more thermal capacity to the system as a whole and that's where I've finally hit my breaking point (pun intended). I've gotten to the point where my cost for consumables is hurting me with all the track time I'm getting, and my confidence is still going down. The stock braking system isn't designed for track usage and the air ducting is simply a crutch for the system, which is not very thermally efficient at all by design. It has not solved the issue of my lack of braking confidence and it never will. There is only so much braking power a floating 2-piston caliper and 24mm wide rotor can deliver and the demand I'm bringing to them on track has far exceeded their thermal capacity. It took me a while to admit all this to myself but now that I can finally afford a BBK, I'm coming to terms with it all and deciding to cut my losses before getting too deep in consumables in an already inefficient system.
I'm admittedly a hard sale. I must have read the
Essex/AP Racing Sprint Kit product page 10 times over before I finally came to terms that the pros of the BBK far outweigh the one single con: high entry price. Cheaper, thicker pads, more compound variety, more braking power, no dust boots, huge increase in thermal capacity/efficiency, 20lbs overall unsprung weight reduction...etc. The bias also remains near stock as the piston sizes were custom from Essex with that requirement in mind.
So all that said, my BBK arrives tomorrow and I couldn't be more excited to get all these new parts on the car and back out on track.
I went with CL RC6 pads for track and Carbotech Bobcats (1521) for street use. I will be removing the Touge Factory brake cooling kit since the backing plates are not compatible with the fixed caliper design on the BBK. I may revisit ducting in the future but for now I'll likely pass my kit on to someone else who can benefit from it. To address brake cooling I've got a pair of Porsche 911 GT3 brake air guides...
...that will mount to the control arms in the same fashion they do on the GT3, only using zip ties for security
(credit to @
makinen for pics and application)
As you can see below they are functional at drawing in air from the wheel wells at speed and redirecting it to the rotors.
To what measurable degree they will work is to be determined but all I know is for $34 shipped I'm not going to let all that air slip past my control arms without getting put to good use! I encourage others here to try them out as there only seems to be a few using them.
Tracking this car has been a learning experience for me and a very rewarding one at that. As I approach my 2nd year anniversary of ownership I'm reminded of how far this build has come and how and it's pretty humbling looking back at it all. I'm looking forward to getting back my lost braking confidence and having more mechanical grip from the new suspension and extra camber dialed in all around.
