quick napkin math says the 35mm version of the kit is actually 9% less brake torque. Whats up with that?

 

How much weight savings over OEM rotors and calipers?


Thanks

 

The 41mm version is meant to be run with our vented RX8 rear competition brake kit (RX8 caliper retrofit kit and vented 2 piece 314x20mm directional curved vane rotor - retains OEM parking brake) however it can be run on it's own without the rear kit with only minimal reduced rear brake bias. We recommend this kit for customers purchasing our rear kit, or considering purchasing our rear kit in the future. ->http://www.sakebombgarage.com/sbg-co...-retrofit-kit/

SakeBomb RX-8 Caliper BBK

If you are definitely going to stick with the stock rears we have a 35mm piston variant of the same kit. Your 9% bias shift ignores the pad height differences front to rear which actually ends up at 5% less torque for a total of -1.3% total front bias shift. It's within 1% of stock but realize Honda was VERY conservative with their rear bias numbers and we've shown the chassis can easily handle an extra 1% rear - which gives more total overall brake force generated at the limit (ie shorter stopping distances). It gets rather complicated as static max bias also changes with spring rate, front tire size, and compound, along with track surface, so unfortunately we have to deal in ranges instead of absolutes.

So rule of thumb, order:
35mm for stock rears
41mm for our RX8 vented rear conversion* (can be added later, running a 41mm piston with stock rears is acceptable)

 

Think the Stoptech required roughly 17-20mm spacer, so I would guess in that range. This is a beefier caliper, but they may have been able to move it more inboard, not sure.

 

A couple of us have 15mm spacers on the ST40 kits on oem v1 wheels

 

Trying to figure out benefits over the standard wilwood big brake upgrade which is their narrow superlite caliper, more diverse pad choices? Better rotors? Thanks.

The template appears to (surprisingly) fit my 17x9 +63 Kosei K8r's but i think thats a big thanks tothe wheel spoke design.

 

Speaking of, what are the differences between this brake kit and the Revolution Brake wilwood brake kit? From what I can tell:

Caliper: Same
Rotors: One piece vs. Two piece; both curved vane, same dimensions (size)
Brake Lines: SS w/o PVC sleeves? vs. SS w/ PCV sleeves
Pads: "High Performance Street" vs. Not included
Price: $949 + free shipping vs. $1450 + ~$60 shipping (intro pricing)

Links:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Big-Brake-Ki...item236ff84fe1
http://store.revolutionbrake.com/14-0123.html

Also, FYI, when I calculate brake bias with this kit I get a tiny bit more front bias:
Stock F & Stock R: 65.7% Front
Stoptech F and Stock R: 68.7% Front
Sakebomb Wilwood 35mm F & Stock R: 67.6% Front
Sakebomb Wilwood 41mm F & Stock R: 74.1% Front
Sakebomb Wilwood 41mm F & Sakebomb RX8 R: 65.9% Front

Seems like the piston sizes actually work out really well. I wonder why Wilwood doesn't stagger their piston sizes (i.e. 36/33mm) for these calipers?

My buddy bought your Wilwood kit for his FD and the brake clearance surprised him. He has flat spoke RPF1s and they cleared by about 3mm. The larger Stoptech calipers wouldn't have been close to clearing. So, it'd expect this kit to have better wheel clearance than the Stoptechs by a decent amount if I had to guess.

 

So whats the significant advantage of the AP kit? Floating rotors and a bit of weight savings? Is there a significant different in power?

 

That's the first we've seen of it but it seems like a similar setup. The cost difference is in the rotors themselves, due to the massive weight decrease, the metalurgy, vane count and structure, and aerospace grade 2024-t351 brake hats with mil-spec hardware. We've had sets of those cheap rotors here before... they weigh an amazing amount. If I remember correctly something like 25lbs vs 16lbs for our rotor. Slotting also appears to be an extra $100 from that company as well. We'd happily sell our brake kit with single piece cast rotors for the same price... but we didn't build this to sacrifice making money for providing quality performance parts to the S2000 community. If we supplied this kit with those rotors at that cost, we'd actually be making quite a bit more money vs our system at the higher price point. The devil is in the details... if it's too good to be true someone is getting the short end of the stick.

If you guys would like, we're happy to put together a budget-budget option for the same price, but we absolutely would not recommend going this route due to the weight and performance penalties. That said the customer is always right, and PM us if you want a single piece solution... but please be aware of the huge weight penalty which wipes away many of the benefits of this caliper. Our focus for this brake kit was a balance between cost and high performance track use with cheap replaceable components ($125 per replacement rotor ring).

It sort of goes against our general design principles to offer something like this though... it's a slippery slope, and you end up in the position of Stoptech making lots of money selling heavy and cheap shiny red calipers, on Centric discs

As for clearance, there's quite a bit. We've sent out nearly 50 FD kits so far and have received quite a few thank you emails from our FD buddies, and one of the big thumbs ups we've received was how good the wheel clearance was with the kits we put together... shoot us a PM, I'm curious who we know in common I'm sure we know him, as the FD community is small.

-Heath

 

Forgot to touch on this... we don't include brake pads because there is no one size fits all pad. We are always happy to recommend pads based on your use-case, driving style, previous pad type and brand preferences, etc. but 99% of the time if you see "pads included for free" run. Any decent pad worth their salt would not be "included" for free. Lots of companies throw in junk pads just so they can wipe their hands and walk away, and bake the cost of something you really do not want into the kit. What you get are terrible quality brake pads in a performance brake kit... and the company just sold you something which you should be throwing in the garbage, but were forced to pay for anyway. If pads are included with your brake kit, and you did not pick them from a list of available compounds, you can be assured that you just purchased something which should be in the trash can not under your wheels.